The owner of the Russian private military company Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin said that on May 10, the Wagner mercenaries will withdraw from Bakhmut of the Donetsk Region due to a lack of ammunition, and the PMC will hand over its positions to the Ministry of Defense of the aggressor state of Russia.
Prigozhin said this in a video message on Friday, May 5, Ukrainian News Agency reports.
He said that in October 2022, the "Bakhmut Meat Grinder" operation began with the participation of the Wagner mercenaries.
According to Prigozhin, this operation demonstrated "its high efficiency", but later units of the Wagner PMC "came into disfavor with envious paramilitary bureaucrats".
The owner of the PMC accused the military command of the Russian Federation of creating an artificial shortage of ammunition and personnel, in particular, he stated that the shortage of ammunition at Wagner is 90%.
"We were supposed to take Bakhmut by May 9, 2023, but knowing this, since May 1, the paramilitary bureaucrats practically cut us off from any artillery ammunition," Prigozhin said.
Prigozhin noted that the offensive resources of the Wagner PMC ran out in early April, and the Defense Forces of Ukraine supposedly outnumbered them 5 times.
According to him, due to the shortage of ammunition, the losses of the Wagner mercenaries are increasing "geometrically".
Prigozhin stated that the Wagner commanders' council had decided that they would hold their positions in Bakhmut until May 10.
After that, the PMC will hand over its positions to units of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, and the Wagner mercenaries themselves will leave Bakhmut and go to the rear camps to "lick their wounds."
"I am withdrawing units of the Wagner PMC from Bakhmut, because in the absence of ammunition they are doomed to a senseless death," he said.
Prigozhin emphasized that no one responded to his appeal, so he appealed openly.
In addition to the video message, Prigozhin also published a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin as Supreme Commander, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, and to the entire people of Russia.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, on the morning of May 5, the founder of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, showed a mountain of corpses of the murdered Wagner mercenaries and demanded ammunition from the Minister of Defense of the aggressor state of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu and military commander Valery Gerasimov.
On April 28, Prigozhin announced that the Wagner PMC was ending and could cease to exist.
Already in early April, it became known that in the offensive operations in the Bakhmut direction, the command of the occupiers began to involve more paratroopers and motorized riflemen due to the high losses of the Wagner mercenaries.
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