Bodies could be seen lying stretched out on the frozen ground in eastern Ukraine. Wagner units have been deployed there for months in the bitter battle for the town of Bachmut. “This is one of the places where the bodies of the deceased are collected,” Prigozhin said in an interview with a well-known Russian military blogger.
“These are guys who died yesterday starving for ammunition. Mothers, wives and children will have their bodies. It should only be a fifth of them. Who is to blame that they died? The culprits are the ones who should have settled the question of how do we get enough ammunition.”
Missing signatures for ammunition deliveries
In addition, Prigozhin published a copy of an official Wagner request for ammunition to the Ministry of Defense. It contains detailed lists of shells used, requested and received. “They still don’t give us ammunition,” Prigozhin said. “No steps were taken to give us ammunition.”
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, the commander in chief of the Ukraine operation, withheld their signatures on the ammunition delivery permits, Prigozhin said. Despite the lack of ammunition, his Wagner mercenaries would continue trying to take Bachmut. “Twice as many of us will die until none of us are left,” he said. “And if all of Wagner are dead, then Shoigu and Gerasimov will probably have to take up arms themselves.”
appeal to the population
Prigozhin called on his compatriots to support his demand for ammunition and to put pressure on the army. “If every Russian (…) just said: ‘Give Wagner ammunition’, (…) that would be very important,” he said in a recording released on Wednesday.
Prigozhin called on Russians “from the driver to the flight attendant” to demand ammunition for the Wagner mercenaries and said corresponding demands were already being circulated on the Internet. “We will crush them and get them to stop talking nonsense,” Prigozhin said. There are enough bullets, “but career-oriented politicians, scumbags, bastards have to sign first” so that they would be delivered, he scolded in the audio message.
Attack against Minister already on Tuesday
Only on Tuesday did he accuse Shoigu and Gerasimov of high treason because they deliberately did not send the Wagner units any ammunition and also refused to help them with air transport. “There is simply direct opposition,” Prigozhin said in a voice message published on Telegram. “That is equivalent to high treason.” The Ministry of Defense responded to this on Tuesday evening and described the allegations as completely untrue.
Shoigu is loyal to President Vladimir Putin and a close ally. Shoigu has a close confidant in Gerasimov, who only took over command of the Ukraine mission in January. Neither have publicly responded to accusations by the mercenary boss, who has repeatedly accused them of incompetence and repeatedly complained that the achievements of his mercenary force, which operates largely independently of the Russian military command, are not given sufficient credit.
No connection to Putin?
From autumn 2022, Prigozhin had also recruited prisoners from all over Russia for the mercenary force and promised them amnesty in return. The political scientist Tatyana Stanovaya took Prigozhin’s increasingly frequent and violent recent public statements as an indication that the mercenary boss “no longer has direct access” to President Putin: “This is an act of desperation and an attempt to make contact through the public and startle the military leadership,” she said.
