The head of the Russian Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, appeared on Sunday to be abandoning his plans to withdraw from Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine when he said the Defense Ministry had promised him the weapons and ammunition he needed to continue fighting in Bakhmut. And he suggested that he could continue his offensive against the city that Russia sees as a springboard for other cities in the Donbass region.
"Tonight for the first time we received an order stating that we will be given the weapons and ammunition necessary to continue combat actions (...)," Prigozhin said in an audio message broadcast on his Telegram channel. . He added that he has also been assured that "everything will be done on the flanks so that the Ukrainian enemy does not attack" and that the Wagner Group can "act in Artiomovsk (Russian name for Bakhmut) in the way it deems convenient."
Prigozhin also maintained that the commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces, General Sergei Surovikin, will be the person in charge of "making decisions regarding Wagner's combat actions and his communication with the Defense Ministry." "He is the only person with the star of an Army general who knows how to fight. There is no other so sensible and with a star," he stressed.
Prigozhin did not reveal whether his units would finally remain in Bakhmut after receiving a promise from Moscow that the Wagner Group would have enough ammunition to continue fighting in the city, where there are still some areas to be conquered, according to what he said last night in another audio message.
Last Friday the businessman announced that the mercenaries would leave at midnight on the 10th due to a lack of ammunition, a complaint he had made on multiple occasions but never with an ultimatum involved.
On Friday night, the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, offered to occupy the positions that the Wagnerites would leave in Bakhmut, and on Saturday Prigozhin himself contacted representatives of the Chechen special forces to organize the transfer, according to his own words. .
He also wrote a letter to the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, asking for his permission to hand over the positions held by his fighters in Bakhmut to Kadyrov's Akhmat special troops. The Chechen leader, in turn, assured in a video posted on his Telegram channel on Saturday that he had already begun to send forces in the direction of that front.
He indicated that he had written a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking for his permission to assume responsibility for the fighting in the eastern Ukrainian city next Wednesday and that he had begun to discuss a strategy for Bakhmut with the Defense Ministry.
