Frustrated and enraged, Prigozhin lashes out again at Russian Defense Ministry
The owner of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, continues to make public his conflict with the Russian Defense Ministry, accusing the Russian military leadership of not providing enough ammunition for the assault on Bakhmut.
In a new video published today, Prigozhin reads out the order of the Russian Defense Ministry, which says "clearly that the withdrawal of the Wagner fighters from their positions will be regarded as treason." At the same time, the document allegedly states that the Russian Defense Ministry had committed to supply the PMC with all the necessary weapons and ammunition. Prigozhin claims that the Wagner Group was never given the required amount of ammunition. And therefore, the mercenaries have every right to leave the town, and then ask the question of who really "betrayed the motherland."
"There are 31 points in our request, and the numbers that we are given are about 15 times less, that is, half. We ask for 7200 units for ten days, we are given 1600 for ten days. The next one is 960 units – 60 received. This morning, the Chief of the General Staff personally corrected all the numbers and reduced them by 10 times. This is very bad," Prigozhin said.
According to Prigozhin, the Russian Defense Ministry is doing everything to ensure that the "Wagner fighters" fail to capture Bakhmut. In this case, Prigozhin promised to tell Vladimir Putin about the real situation with ammunition at the front.
"If all these conversations are only meant only to deceive the Supreme Commander-in-Chief (Putin), then either he will tear you apart, or the Russian people, who will be very upset if the war is lost. Then the people would come with pitchforks and raise them on pitchforks right at the house on Rublevka in a lost war, " the head of Wagner PMC threatened the Russian military leadership.
In addition, Prigozhin was outraged by the fact that the soldiers of one of the units of the Russian Armed Forces left their positions south of Bakhmut and fled, leaving open about 3 square kilometers, and the military unit of Gazprom Fakel refused to go to these positions. Therefore, the "Wagner mercenaries" had to "somehow" close the hole. As it turned out, these were the soldiers of the 72nd brigade of the Russian Armed Forces who left their positions.
In this regard, Prigozhin accused officials from the Defense Ministry of trying to "sell Russia" and deliberately sending soldiers to useless death.
"A soldier should not die because of the absolute stupidity of his leadership. And the generals and colonels on the ground are obliged to carry out this stupidity, because the orders that they receive from above are absolutely criminal. I want to emphasize “there is a crime called "the destruction of the Russian people and treason." A narrow handful of people are engaged in it," Prigozhin said.
Earlier, the owner of the Wagner PMC happily reported that his unit had received permission to act in Bakhmut as it saw fit. In addition, decisions on the supply of PMCs will now be made by Russian General Sergei Surovikin in cooperation with the Russian Defense Ministry.
Earlier, Prigozhin promised that units of his PMC would leave Bakhmut at 12:00am on May 10 due to shortage of ammunition.