Taking his people out of the fight Bahamut announced the founder of the mercenary, paramilitary organization Wagner Evgeny Prigozhinaggravating with insults and insults his conflict with the Russian military leadership, which he has long accused of insufficiently supplying his fighters with ammunition.

“On behalf of the fighters and his administration Wagner I declare that from May 10, 2023, we will be obliged to surrender the combat positions we occupy in Bakhmut to the forces of the Ministry of Defense, and transfer the remaining forces to the logistics camps to close the wounds, ”Prigozhin said in a written statement. with award recipients President Vladimir Putin, Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Gennady Gerasimov.

Earlier, Wagner published a video in which Prigozhin is among 30 corpses. “These are the Wagner children who died today. They volunteered and died so you could sit like fat cows in your fancy offices,” Wagner’s boss says to camera before blowing up: “We’re 70% out of ammo. Shoigu, Gerasimov! Where is that p… ammo?

Wagner is playing a leading role in a deadly battle for Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that Russia has been trying in vain to capture for months. If Prigozhin’s threat to withdraw his troops finally comes to fruition – unlikely given his impulsive and volatile nature – the consequences for the course of the battle could be dramatic.

He leads Wagner’s mercenaries out of Bahamut and grimly lashes out at the military leadership.

However, yesterday Kyiv gave a different picture. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said yesterday that the Russians are “moving Wagner fighters from all over the front line to Bakhmut” as they want to capture the city at all costs by May 9, the day the anti-fascists won World War II. “The Russians have a penchant for symbolism, and their main historical myth is May 9, so they really set themselves the goal of capturing Bahamut by that date,” he said.

Village evacuation

In the meantime, there are growing signs that the Ukrainian military has already begun preliminary operations ahead of a full-scale counteroffensive in the near future. Yesterday, the Russian-appointed governor of the Zaporizhia region in southern Ukraine, which is 80% controlled by the Russian military, began evacuating villages near the line of contact as Ukrainian artillery shelling intensified, a sign of a counterattack by enemy forces. The focus of Moscow is the recent drone strike on the Kremlin. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, from India, where he is visiting, insisted that “this was a clearly hostile act that the Kyiv terrorists clearly could not have committed without the knowledge of their superiors.” In addition, a meeting of the Russian Security Council chaired by Putin was expected last night to discuss Moscow’s response to the incident.

The sharp escalation of tension between the warring camps in recent days was reflected in the meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea countries in Ankara. People’s Deputy of Ukraine Oleksandr Marikovskiy punched the head of a Russian official who took the Ukrainian flag from his hands. Earlier, Marikovsky unfurled the flag in question behind Russian MP Olga Timofeeva as she filmed the video.