Days after he launched a furious tirade against Russia’s military leadership and threatened to withdraw his forces from Bakhmut, the head of mercenary group has said it would continue to lead the offensive on the city in eastern Ukraine.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, who leads the Wagner Group, a private army that has been invaluable to Russia’s efforts, said in an audio message posted to Telegram that Russian officials had “promised the amount of ammunition we’d need to continue fighting.
“They have sworn to us that we will be provided with everything necessary in the flanks to not be cut off by the enemy.”
Prigozhin, a billionaire oligarch who is known as Putin’s chef for his past role as a caterer to the Kremlin, said that the group had been assigned Gen. Sergei Surovokin to oversee Wagner’s actions and mediate between the mercenaries and Russia’s Defense Ministry.
Surovokin is a longtime ally of Prigozhin, who was briefly Russia’s overall commander in Ukraine at the start of 2023 and had been previously accused of overseeing a brutal bombardment that destroyed much of Aleppo when he led Russian forces in Syria.
His message came days after he threatened, in another Telegram video, to hand over control of the grueling Bakhmut offensive to Russian army forces because of a shortage of ammunition.
Surrounded by what appeared to be bodies, he said, in an expletive-laden rant, that he would withdraw Wagner units, which he said were doomed to a “senseless death.”
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