(CNN) Standing in front of the bodies of dozens of what he claimed were his fighters killed in Russia’s war against Ukraine, the head of the private military company Wagner on Thursday issued a scathing challenge to Russia’s military leadership. , blaming their demise on a lack of support from Moscow.
“We lack 70% of the required ammunition!” Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video posted on Telegram.
Shining a small flashlight on the corpses laying outside near what appeared to be the front line of the battle, Prigozhin claimed they were the casualties of just one day’s fighting.
“Shoigu, Gerasimov, where … are the bullets?” said Prigozhin, who called the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the head of the Russian armed forces, Gen. Valery Gerasimov.
“The blood is still fresh,” he said, pointing to the bodies behind him. “They come here as volunteers and are dying so you can sit like fat cats in your luxurious offices.”
Prigozhin, whose mercenary group Wagner has taken a growing role in the conflict in Ukraine as Russian forces weaken, has been seen a lot on the front lines in recent months – where he claims credit for of territorial gains, especially in the fighting that took place around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
Known for its disregard for the lives of its own soldiers, the group’s brutal and common tactics are believed to have resulted in high casualties, as new recruits were sent into battle with little formal training – a process described by US Lt. General Mark Hertling as “like feeding meat to a meat grinder.”
But as Prigozhin’s stature rose, so did his clashes with Shoigu and Gerasimov, prompting speculation about possible elite infighting in Moscow as Russia’s military campaign failed to advance.
In February, he accused the two men of “treason” for their failure to support and provide for the Wagner group in Ukraine.
His latest challenge to Russian defense officials comes as Bakhmut remains increasingly contested.
“These are one man’s kingly fathers and one man’s sons. And you scoundrels who don’t give [us] bullets, you b*tches, eat your guts in hell!” Prigozhin shouted in the video.
Prigozhin’s call for more ammunition is not new, nor are his methods. He often complained about insufficient support from the Kremlin in the fierce battle for the eastern city.
In February, he made a similar appeal for bullets, posting a photo on Telegram of a pile of corpses. Shortly after that posting, he made another claim that a shipment of ammunition was on its way to Wagner’s troops.
But the support doesn’t seem to have lasted, at least not as Prigozhin would have liked. Last weekend, he threatened to withdraw his troops from the city if Moscow did not provide more ammunition.
In an interview with Russian pro-Kremlin blogger Semyon Pegov, who blogs under the alias WarGonzo, Prigozhin admitted that those responsible for purchasing weapons in Moscow “stopped giving us ammunition. “
CNN’s Nathan Hodge contributed to this report.
