The founder of PMC Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, asked Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to give a combat order to transfer the positions of PMC Wagner in Bakhmut to the special unit of the Russian Guard Akhmat (deployed in Chechnya). The statement of the head of the PMC and a copy of the document were published by Prigozhin's press service.
Prigozhin also said that he personally decided to contact representatives of the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, in order to begin the transfer of positions in Bakhmut.
“I am already contacting his representatives to begin the transfer of positions immediately, so that on May 10 at 00:00, exactly at the moment when we completely exhaust our combat potential, our comrades-in-arms take our places and continue the assault on the Bakhmut settlement.”
In a statement addressed to Shoigu, Prigozhin asks to issue a combat order to transfer the positions of the Wagner PMC to units of the Akhmat battalion.
The day before, Shoigu demanded that the issues of continuous supply of troops in the "Northern Military District" areas with all the necessary weapons and equipment be under special control. Before that, Prigozhin recorded a video message to the military leadership of the Russian Federation against the background of the corpses of Wagner PMC mercenaries. In the video, he stated that the shortage of ammunition reaches 70%, and criticized both Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. Later, Prigozhin announced that the Wagner PMC would leave Bakhmut on May 10 and hand over positions to units of the Ministry of Defense.
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 here near Bakhmut against the entire Ukrainian army.”
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 in the 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, while the Ministry of Defense, in turn, claimed that not only PMC mercenaries were participating in the battles.