Yevgeny Prigozhin to Threaten with Withdrawing Wagner Group from Bakhmut on May 10

A businessperson close to Putin accused the Russian Defense Ministry of not supplying ammunition. After leaving Bakhmut, Wagner Group will go to rear camps, Yevgeny Prigozhin explained. The founder of the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) Yevgeny Prigozhin threatened to withdraw the militants of the group from Bakhmut in the Donetsk region from May 10, where the Ukrainian army repels attacks by Russian forces. A businessman close to Russian President Vladimir Putin explained this decision by “shell hunger”. “We were put on the so-called artificial shortage of ammunition, which lie freely in warehouses,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video released on Friday, May 5. According to the founder of the Wagner Group, in the last month, the PMC received no more than 10 percent of the ammunition needed. Yevgeny Prigozhin accused the “paramilitary bureaucrats” from the Russian Defense Ministry of envy after the group’s actions in Bakhmut. After leaving this Ukrainian city, the PMC forces will head to the rear camps, where “they will wait until they are needed again,” the businessman added. A few hours earlier, the press service of Prigozhin’s Concord company circulated a video where the businessman, whose speech abounded in swear words, called Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov “scum” and emotionally demanded to provide PMC with shells. The video was filmed in front of dozens of deceased Wagner PMC mercenaries. Meanwhile, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin reviewed Yevgeny Prigozhin’s statement “in the media”, but would not comment on it, “because it concerns the special military operation”.