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Wagner Group chief, U.S. election interferer, and onetime convict Yevgeny Prigozhin did something unusual, even for him, on Wednesday: he published a photo of Wagner’s losses in Ukraine.
It’s a graphic image, showing a ditch full of corpses mutilated by what appear to be military-grade weapons. But Prigozhin used it to reinforce a complaint that he’s been making over the past week: the Russian Ministry of Defense has stopped giving his mercenary army the ammo it needs to keep fighting.
It’s a rare example of infighting in the Russian war effort breaking out into the open.
Prigozhin has accused senior Russian military officials, sometimes by name and at least by rank, of sabotaging his mercenary company’s assault by halting full ammunition deliveries.
He started doing this last week via the press service of his company, Concord. That firm was indicted in the Mueller investigation for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
Now, in a series of increasingly unhinged recordings, Prigozhin is airing out his purported difficulties in obtaining ammunition, comparing himself to a beggar who has to “obey and apologize” for ammo.
“There is simply direct opposition that can’t be called anything other than an attempt to destroy PMC Wagner, it can be compared to treason,” Prigozhin yelled on one recording.
On another, he complained that the Russian regular army was sucking up too many supplies.
“A ton of near-military officers have decided that its their country, their people, they decided that this people will die when it’s comfortable for them, when they like it,” he said, adding that Wagner was receiving 20 percent of the ammo that it required to maintain its offensive. “Do you have ammunition? Or have you sold it to the Americans, or something else?”
“I have people dying by the truckload,” he added in a Tuesday recording.
Even if you don’t understand Russian, the vitriol bleeds through Prigozhin’s recordings. You can almost hear the spittle coming out of his mouth. Listen below:
On Wednesday morning, Prigozhin posted the photo of the corpses of his troops.
“These are guys who died yesterday of shell-hunger,” Prigozhin said in a recording attached to the post. “Their children will receive their bodies.”
The warlord added: “Who is guilty is he who should be guaranteeing the supply of ammunition in its needed quantities. The final signatures should be from either [General Staff Chief Valery] Gerasimov or [Minister of Defense Sergey] Shoigu.”
It’s extremely rare to see infighting like this break out in public, and especially for Prigozhin to name Russia’s top military officials as being responsible for what he described as a lack of ammo.
What’s actually going on remains unclear, though the New York Times suggested that it was part of a battle to obtain or retain influence before Putin. Other reports have suggested that Prigozhin was given a Feb. 24 deadline to take Bakhmut — the focus of his recent offensive — and that he may be lashing out as he realizes that Ukraine will likely still maintain a real, if tenuous, grip on the city by then.
Prigozhin’s outbursts have split the community of Russian warbloggers, many of them soldiers and/or former convicts themselves, who chronicle the invasion on the messaging app Telegram.
Aleksandr Khodakovsky, a battalion commander in one of Russia’s proxy states in Ukraine, suggested that Prigozhin was exaggerating — that Wagner was now receiving the same allocation of ammo that the rest of the Russian military does, and not more, as his forces purportedly did before.
“Results don’t only come from quantity,” he remarked.
Putin obliquely referenced conflicts between military leaders during his speech on Tuesday.
“We need to remove, I’m emphasizing this, any inter-agency contradictions, formalities, grudges, tiffs, and similar nonsense,” Putin said. “Everything for business, everything for a result — that’s where everything should be directed.”
When asked whether he watched Putin’s speech, Prigozhin demurred on Tuesday.
“I, unfortunately, was busy all day with organizing supply for military activities and couldn’t watch the President’s speech,” he said.
