In today's summary:
- Yevgeny Prigozhin entered into a public skirmish with Shoigu and threatened to withdraw the Wagner PMC from Bakhmut;
- Military experts Pavel Luzin and David Gendelman share their views on the "shell shortage" in the RF Armed Forces;
- In the Russian-controlled territories of the Zaporozhye region, an evacuation was announced from the settlements adjacent to the front;
- A hypersonic missile "Dagger" was allegedly shot down in the Kyiv region, the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine issued a refutation;
- Among the Z-patriots, Prigozhin is accused of "blood PR";
- In the West, they are “working through the issue” with the supply of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine;
- Ukraine trained 10,000 drone operators;
- Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu inspected the new equipment, among which old T-62 tanks were wormed their way.
The situation at the front
The focus is on Bakhmut, but not in connection with the dynamics of hostilities. As far as one can judge, the situation in the city has hardly changed for several days. One of the founders and the main public face of the Wagner PMC, businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, recorded an open appeal , threatening that the Wagner fighters would leave the city and hand it over to the RF Armed Forces if the problem with the supply of ammunition was not resolved as soon as possible. The deadline for Prigozhin's "ultimatum" is May 10.
Military expert Pavel Luzin, in a conversation with The Insider, recalled that the shortage of ammunition was indirectly confirmed by Vladimir Putin in March 2023:
“There was a colossal expense in 2022. Such an expense cannot be covered by anything. These are years and years of work of factories. They purposefully saved up for at least 10 years before that, when they launched full production. Prior to that, for the first time, Russia faced a shortage of ammunition in the summer of 2002. Then it was not so sharp, of course, but since then they began to gradually re-equip and increase production, and, I repeat, they reached full capacity in the 2010s. In 2022, more than half of this was simply used up. Now they spend 3-4 times more per day than they produce. It was not from a good life that 300,000 shells were imported from Iran.”
In turn, Israeli military expert David Gendelman, in an interview with The Insider, noted that although there really is a “shell shortage”, the RF Armed Forces have not yet run out of ammunition, they are simply allocated to Prigozhin on a general basis, as well as to regular units:
“On the one hand, the RF Armed Forces are really experiencing a shortage of ammunition and there really is a “shell hunger”. This does not mean that the reserves have already run out, but the costs were huge, and now the RF Armed Forces no longer allow themselves to spend as many shells per day as they did last summer. In addition, shells also need to be saved due to the expected Ukrainian offensive, which will require increased consumption to repel. So if Wagner really gets less than it needs, there are objective reasons for this.
But, on the other hand, Prigogine demands a special attitude towards himself, and even if he is actually given the same as other units based on tasks, forces and means, this is not enough for him. And in general, the conflict between Prigogine and the Moscow Region is fundamental, ammunition is only part of it. And the ban on the continuation of the recruitment of prisoners, and media coverage – Prigozhin generally wants more than the MO according to him to give.
The very need for a Wagner, in addition to the regular army, is inconvenient for the Moscow Region, and they would like Prigozhin to take what they give and do what they say, and all his claims to the assault vanguard of Russia and his loud statements about patriotism and against snickering elites, including and in the MO itself, are perceived with hostility. Therefore, they give him less ammunition than he wants – go fight with what you have, if you are so smart.
As The Insider wrote earlier, Prigozhin's statements about the shortage of shells are indirectly confirmed by a document published by one of the Russian Telegram channels, which is a certificate of ammunition allocated to the Wagner PMC over the past two months.
The document was published with the comment: “Prigozhin, with his statements, is trying to escalate the situation around the supply of weapons.” However, if the data in the document is correct, then it is possible to compare, for example, the total number of shells for multiple launch rocket systems and for tanks (20,057 and 13,727, respectively) with the number of corresponding equipment near Bakhmut, announced by the Ukrainian side (65 tanks and 56 MLRS) and using simple calculations to establish that in the last two months, the "Wagnerites" had to be content with approximately 6 missiles per installation and 3-4 shells per tank per day.
It should be noted that on the eve of the media resources associated with the PMC Wagner, distributed a video with the former Deputy Minister of Defense Mikhail Mizintsev, who reportedly became the deputy commander of the PMC Dmitry "Wagner" Utkin.
The Kremlin saw Prigozhin's statement, said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov. He added that he could not comment on it, "because it concerns the course of a special military operation."
At the same time, after Prigozhin’s threats, Shoigu demanded that the issues of continuous supply of troops in the “Northern Military District” areas with all the necessary weapons and equipment be kept under special control. He set such a task for Colonel-General Alexei Kuzmenkov, who is responsible for the logistics of the army (who recently replaced Mizintsev at this post) during an inspection of military equipment in the Southern Military District.
Since the first day of the war in Ukraine, Wagner PMC fighters have been openly criticizing the Russian command and using obscene language against the generals. At the end of December, they posted a video message to the head of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov: “To the Chief of the General Staff: you are a f*ck and damn it. We have nothing to fight with, we have no shells. There the guys are dying for us, and we are sitting here, fucking not helping. We need shells, we want to f*ck everyone. We are fighting against the entire Ukrainian army near Bakhmut.”
Prigozhin himself turned to Gerasimov and Shoigu, accusing them of undersupply of weapons, like this: “Why don’t Wagner PMCs give ammunition? <…> Because a handful of near-military functionaries decided that this was their country, that this was their people, they decided that this people would die when it was convenient for them, when they liked it.” He proposed to equate their actions with treason. In January 2023, Prigozhin and the Ministry of Defense argued over the capture of Soledar. The head of the PMC stated that the Wagnerites took the city, while the Ministry of Defense, in turn, claimed that not only they were participating in the battles.
While Prigozhin threatens to leave Bakhmut, Russian governors continue to visit their military personnel called up from their regions. The governor of the Belgorod region Gladkov came to the mobilized to the Kherson direction. They prepared for a meeting with the governor and hung his portrait in the room in the image of a character from the Ukrainian game STALKER. You can see it in one of the photos on the governor's Telegram channel. The picture of Gladkov was photoshopped on the background of the nuclear reactor in Pripyat from the game.
In May 2022, Gladkov put this picture on the avatar of his channel, but deleted it five hours later, the 7×7 edition notes.
The head of the Nikolaev Regional State Administration Vitaliy Kim appealed to the residents of the region with a request not to film the movement of military equipment, which may indicate the active phase of preparation for an offensive operation, and may also indirectly confirm the reports of some Z-channels about the preparation of a landing across the Dnieper.
A partial evacuation was also announced in the occupied part of the Zaporozhye region. In total, 70,000 people are planned to be evacuated from the frontline settlements, Russian-appointed regional vice-premier Andrey Kozenko told the TASS news agency.
Researcher Kyle Glen publishes a map of settlements where evacuations have been announced.
Mutual shelling and sabotage
Ukrainian air defense (intentionally) shot down its own Bayraktar TB2 UAV in the sky over Kiev, which lost control due to a technical malfunction.
“On May 4, at about 8 p.m. in the Kyiv region, during a scheduled flight, the Bayraktar TB2 UAV lost control. Since the uncontrolled stay of the UAV in the sky of the capital could lead to undesirable consequences, it was decided to use the calculations of mobile fire teams. Target destroyed! It's a pity, but this is a technique, and such cases happen. Probably, we are talking about a technical malfunction, the reasons are being established, ”the command of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement.
The Kiev authorities reported a fire in a four-story building in the Solomyansky district, allegedly caused by debris from a drone shot down over the city, no one was injured.
Against the background of the story with the downed Bayraktar, a much more important event remained almost unnoticed. Apparently, the Ukrainians for the first time managed to shoot down a Russian hypersonic missile. Defense Express journalists, based on photographs of the wreckage of the rocket obtained from their own sources, determined that on May 4 at 2:40 am, a hypersonic Kh-47 Kinzhal missile was shot down in the Kiev region. The definition of ammunition was confirmed by the researchers of the Ukraine Weapons Tracker project. Defense Express was reminded that for the first time the Kiev city military administration reported the shooting down of missiles of a “probably ballistic type” on May 4, and also that Ukraine recently received Patriot complexes, which, in the PAC-3 modification, are capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.
Later, the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine rejected the statement about the downing of the Kinzhal missile over Kiev. And then they canceled the press conferences and advised them to contact the authors of the Defense Express publication and the Kyiv city military administration for comments. Ukraine Weapons Tracker cautiously suggests that the Air Force does not want to disclose its ability to defeat the latest Russian missiles.
An explosion occurred again on the territory of the Ilsky refinery in the Krasnodar Territory. According to preliminary data, the plant was attacked by a Ukrainian drone. He flew into one of the installations and started a fire. The refinery was previously attacked on the night of May 3-4. Then four drones participated in the attack. Mash reports that a group of saboteurs is behind the attack. According to the publication, they were detained.
Losses
Evgeny Prigozhin, in addition to threatening to leave Bakhmut, recorded another vivid video against the backdrop of the dead Wagnerites, in which he sharply criticized Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff, the commander of the so-called. SVO Valery Gerasimov.
Note that Prigozhin did not name the total number of deaths, although he did this on a daily basis, starting from April 29. About 30-40 bodies can be counted in the frame. At the same time, in the next video , where Prigozhin praises the above-mentioned Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev for fighting "shell hunger", he talks about "tens of thousands" killed and wounded during the battles for Bakhmut (which generally corresponds to the recently announced American estimates ).
In the propaganda Telegram channel Veteran's Notes, Prigozhin's behavior is compared to the decision of war criminal Igor Girkin (Strelkov/Runova) to leave Slavyansk in July 2014. “The only difference is that Strelkov Slavyansk nevertheless took and held him for two months. Without ammunition, without artillery, without heavy equipment, without aviation and other assistance from the mainland. I say this as a witness and participant in those events. Bakhmut, after more than eight months of assault, was never taken. In fairness, of course, it should be noted that the intensity of hostilities and the situation itself are now, of course, different than they were in 2014. But Prigozhin's rhetoric is the same as Strelkov's in 2014. Do not be lazy and watch the video and statements of Strelkov May-June 2014. And be surprised at their identity with Prigozhin’s today’s statements,” writes the author of the channel.
Retired aviation colonel Viktor Alksnis, who is close to Girkin's circle of supporters, suggests that "the nine-month assault on Artemovsk is a kind of PR for Mr. Prigozhin, organized on the blood of Wagner fighters."
“It is difficult to give another explanation for this. I doubt very much that Putin personally gave Prigozhin the command to take Artemovsk by Victory Day and he is forced to follow the order of the Commander-in-Chief at any cost. Even filling the enemy with corpses. Maybe Evgeny Viktorovich should, instead of PR on the blood, officially report that due to the lack of shells, he ordered to stop the “meat assault” on Artemovsk and switch to a tough defense in order to save personnel? ”He writes.
“The conflict between the leadership of the RF Ministry of Defense and the leadership of PMC Wagner has not only entered the public field, it has reached the state level. And the leadership of the country should decide it. Shell starvation during a period of aggravation of the situation at the front and active enemy offensive operations is unacceptable. It is also unacceptable in a situation where most of the personnel are mobilized and volunteers. And here in the NVO zone, the fighters do not see that in the rear of the military-industrial complex they are tearing veins so that ALL of our formations and formations have shells. It’s just that the fighters cannot express “concern and indignation”, ”commissioner Yevgeny Poddubny, in turn, notes .
The speaker of the Eastern Group of Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Serhiy Cherevaty recalled that the exhaustion of the combat capabilities of the "Wagner group" was predicted by the Ukrainian command a month ago. According to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the “Wagnerites” lost 200 people killed and wounded every day, and without the possibility of mass recruitment of mercenaries in prisons or some alternative source, their human potential gradually dried up.
Armaments and military equipment
The Netherlands is considering options for the supply of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, “there is no taboo in this matter,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said .
“We are working on options with partners such as Belgium and Denmark to complete the debate on the supply of F-16s to Ukraine,” Rutte said at a press conference.
France, as part of a new military assistance package , plans to transfer to Kiev up to 12 CAESAR self-propelled artillery mounts, as well as (together with Italy) SAMP-T air defense systems.
Danish Acting Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius visited a center in Germany where training of Ukrainian servicemen on former Danish Leopard 1A5-DK tanks transferred to Ukraine has begun. Poulsen said that the transfer of 80 tanks should be made by June 1, and the training of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on them will take about a month.
It is reported that the echelon with tanks Leopard 2A4 was seen in Odessa at the railway station Odessa-Zastava-1.
Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mikhail Fedorov said that Ukraine has trained 10,000 drone operators.
The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that Minister Sergei Shoigu in the Southern Military District conducted an inspection of military equipment and weapons sent to the area of the so-called. "SVO" and posted the corresponding video . In it, Shoigu is shown rows with dozens of modern T-90M tanks and modernized T-72B3 models of 2022, as well as Motovoz-M trucks. Also there you can see the old T-62M tanks of the 2022 model.
T-62M with a 1PN96MT thermal imaging sight and Kontakt-1 dynamic protection are being upgraded at the 103rd armored repair plant near Chita.
The Insider has published a detailed article on how the Russian command sends samples of weapons produced 60-80 years ago to the war zone in Ukraine: from the T-62, T-54/55 and BTR-50 tanks to the D-1 howitzer (sample 1943) and T-12 guns.
On the main events of the war on May 4 – in the previous report: “Prigozhin announced the start of the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a discussion about the “staging” of a drone attack on the Kremlin. What's Happening on the Frontline