Yevgeny Prigozhin said that the PMC Wagner will leave Bakhmut on May 10 and hand over positions to the units of the Ministry of Defense due to a shortage of ammunition among the PMC fighters. The video and text of the statement were published by his press service on Telegram.
According to him, the shortage of shells among the Wagnerites is 90%.
Updated. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin saw Prigozhin's statement, but Peskov personally would not be able to comment on it, because "this concerns the course of a special military operation."
Earlier, Prigozhin recorded a video message to the military leadership of the Russian Federation against the backdrop of the corpses of Wagner PMC mercenaries. He stated that the shortage of ammunition reaches 70%, and criticized Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
During the war in Ukraine, Wagner PMC fighters openly criticize the Russian command, and also use obscene language against the generals. At the end of December, the fighters published 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 repeatedly turned to Gerasimov and Shoigu, accusing them of undersupply of weapons, as follows: “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 suggested equating their actions with treason. This is not the first conflict and struggle for influence between PMCs and the military department. In January, Prigozhin and the Ministry of Defense argued over the capture of Soledar. The head of the PMC stated that the city was taken by the Wagnerites, the Ministry of Defense, in turn, claimed that not only PMC mercenaries were participating in the battles.