Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin attends the funeral of his fighters at the Beloostrovskoye cemetery outside St. Petersburg, Russia, on December 24, 2022. AP Photo Yevgeny Prigozhin threatened to withdraw Wagner Group fighters from Bakhmut over shell shortages. He issued an ultimatum to Russia’s defense minister and gave him 24 hours to respond. Prigozhin has previously sparred with Russia’s military brass over complaints of a lack of support. The founder of Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has threatened to withdraw his mercenaries from Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, escalating his rift with Russia’s military leadership. Prigozhin issued an ultimatum to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu over ammunition shortages in an interview with Russian military blogger Semyon Pegov published Saturday. “Every day, we have stacks of thousands of bodies that we put in coffins and send home,” Prigozhin said, per Al Jazeera’s translation. “If the ammunition deficit is not replenished, we are forced – in order not to run like cowardly rats afterward – to either withdraw or die,” he said.
via businesinsider: Russia’s Wagner boss escalates rift with Putin’s military, threatens Bakhmut withdrawal due to a lack of thousands of artillery shells