Just two days ago he railed against the Kremlinshowing the corpses of his mercenaries, to then indulge in more conciliatory statements once the military leaders of Mosca they had answered positively, with one promiseto your sending request ammunition. An ultimatum request according to which his men would leave or not Bakhmut. But now Yevgeny Prigozhinhead of the Russian militia of the Wagner engaged at the front Ukraineback to the attack of the vertices: in a video he explains that “our army (the Russians) is running away!” from Bakhmut, given that “the 72nd brigade fled” from the town besieged for months “and left behind three square kilometers, for which 500 Wagnerians died”. A retreat that for Prigozhin proves that “the Russian state is not capable of defending the country” and the army leadership of Mosca he is trying to “fool” the president Vladimir Putin about the offensive in Ukraine, just on the highly symbolic day when Mosca commemorate the victory over Germania Nazi in 1945. “If you do everything to deceive the commander-in-chief (Vladimir Putin), then either the commander-in-chief will rip your ass off or the Russian people will be furious if the war is lost,” he said Prigozhinonce again accusing the army of not providing the ammunition needed to take Bakhmutepicenter of the fighting. “The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation has never provided a Wagner the promised ammunition,” he said, saying that “only the 10 percent of ammunition requiredthen specifying the will to abandon the epicenter of the combat if the requests made in recent days are not met. “The question of ammunition must be resolved” because “the Ukrainians they will launch a counteroffensive shortly,” he added.
The clashes between the head of the Wagner and the Russian military leaders have been on the scene for some time: already in recent weeks he had accused the Ministry of Defense Shoigu of high treason for not having sent the required ammunition to the mercenaries, and for wanting to destroy his own men leaving them without bullets. Today the ex-con originally from St.Pietroburgo – at the head of an empire that ranges from catering services to schools to the military to mercenaries engaged in Ukraine – calls on every Russian to pressure the military to share their ammunition with his men. And although he currently appears to be a marginal figure in the Russian political scene, Prigozhin seems to aim to take this path, given the recent approach to Sergei Mironov, head of the Just Russia (SR) party in the Russian parliament, and the support of various Russian right-wingers. Also Andriy Yusovrepresentative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, in an interview with Rbc-Ukraine stated that “people like Prigozhinwhen we talk about the so-called Russian society, if they speak about something, they do it not only in their own name, but in the name of theirs partner. Part of the so-called elite politics and power of Russia is considering various scenarios, including planning some kind of life after Putinafter the defeat in the war with the Ukraine. That’s why they are preparing various scenarios apocalyptic (and actually realistic) for the Russia“.
To analyze the clashes between the Wagner and the ministry of Defence russo also the American think tank Isw (Institute for the Study of War): according to the institute, the general of the army Valery Gerasimovcommanding general of the campaign in Ukraineand perhaps the same Shoigu “They don’t have the ability to lead Prigozhin and the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov as subordinates, but must instead to negotiate with them as equals.”
Per Isw“the degraded capabilities of Gerasimov to check his commanders they will likely further limit the Russian military’s ability to conduct coherent operations involving several areas of responsibility.” Isw evaluates as unlikely that Putin remove Gerasimov from the post of commanding general for the sake of reputation, and thus the public undermining of Gerasimov from Prigozhin e Kadyrov could have a lasting impact on the power of the commanding general in Ukraine.