The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has said Moscow’s military chiefs are refusing to supply the group with munitions and are seeking to destroy it, accusing them of “treason”, in an escalation of the war of words between senior Russian officials and the private army boss.
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary force, which has recruited from prisons across Russia to bolster its ranks, is playing a key role in the efforts to capture the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s east. The battle has exposed tensions between the Wagner group and the Russian army, though the Kremlin denies any rift.
“[Moscow’s] chief of general staff and the defence minister give out orders left and right not only to not give ammunition to PMC Wagner, but also to not help it with air transport,” Prigozhin said in a voice message shared by his press service on Tuesday.
“There is just direct opposition going on, which is nothing less than an attempt to destroy Wagner. This can be equated to high treason,” he added.
Prigozhin also accused the military high command of having prohibited the delivery of shovels for Wagner fighters to dig trenches.
In the past, Prigozhin has criticised Russia’s regular army in Ukraine and recently slammed Moscow’s “monstrous bureaucracy” for slowing military gains. He has also accused the Russian military of attempting to “steal” victories from Wagner.
Russia’s defence ministry denied limiting ammunition shipments to volunteers at the front, but made no mention of the Wagner group private army or of Prigozhin’s accusations.
“All requests for ammunition for assault units are met as soon as possible,” it insisted, promising new deliveries on Saturday and denouncing as “absolutely false” reports of shortages.
“Attempts to create a split within the close mechanism of interaction and support between units of the Russian [fighting] groups are counter-productive and work solely to the benefit of the enemy,” the statement read.
Prigozhin has assumed a more public role since the war started. His Wagner group spearheaded the battle for Bakhmut but his relations with Moscow are clearly deteriorating.
This year Prigozhin was stripped of the right to recruit prisoners and there have been some signs of a Kremlin move to curb his influence.
After the Russian defence ministry rejected his initial accusations on Tuesday, Prigozhin released a voice message saying this was “nothing more than simply spitting at Wagner”, reiterating that his men were very short of supplies.
In his state of the nation speech delivered on Tuesday, Putin seemed to address the infighting.
“We must get rid of … any interdepartmental contradictions, formalities, grudges, misunderstandings, and other nonsense,” he told the political and military elite.
In a post later in the day, Prigozhin said he had been too busy to watch the speech and could therefore not comment on the president’s remarks.
Taking Bakhmut would be a major win for Moscow in its nearly year-long offensive in Ukraine, though analysts say its capture would be mainly symbolic as the city holds little strategic value.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
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