The Stalingrad of the mercenaries?
Prigozhin demands more ammunition – and makes “announcement”
3/11/2023 3:29 p.m
The head of the Wagner group again demands more artillery shells and cartridges. It is said that his mercenaries use 10,000 tons of ammunition per month in Bakhmut. At the same time, Prigozhin – in the midst of battlefield fire – announces “an important announcement”.
According to its boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary group Wagner needs 10,000 tons of ammunition per month for the battle for the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Prigozhin demanded in a now published Video emphatically the supply of artillery shells and cartridges. The video allegedly shows him on the roof of a house in the largely destroyed city – about 1.2 kilometers from the administrative center, which is held by Ukrainian troops. He announced: “We will win.”
The Wagner boss assured that no one in Moscow should have concerns that he had political ambitions. Therefore, the required quantities of ammunition should be delivered to him without reservations. Russia’s billionaires are also ready for this expenditure. He put the monthly costs at half a billion US dollars, the equivalent of around 470 million euros.
Prigozhin admitted in the video that corruption was widespread in his homeland. But he would “take his own corrupt connections with him to the grave”.
Allegedly candidacy for presidential elections in Ukraine
Then the 61-year-old lined up for “an important announcement”. Under audible gunfire, he announced that he would stand as a candidate in next year’s presidential election – not in Russia, as was sometimes assumed, but “in Ukraine”. He will compete against incumbent Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. The Wagner boss is notorious for making fun of his opponents.
Many destroyed houses and streets could be seen in the video – comparatively rare shots from the city, which once had 70,000 inhabitants. Only a few thousand live there today.
Zelenskyy wants to hold the strategically important city of Bakhmut at all costs. Bachmut has been contested since late summer. The city is the main part of the line of defense between Siversk and Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, established after the Russian conquest of Sieverodonetsk and Lysychansk. If successful, the way to the major cities of Slovjansk and Kramatorsk opened up for the Russian troops. This brought a complete conquest of the Donetsk region closer.
Putin is apparently playing Prigozhin
However, Severin Pleyer from the German Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies believes that the Wagner mercenaries only play a minor role in the Russian war against Ukraine. The political scientist from the Bundeswehr University in Hamburg said on ntv that the tough fight for Bakhmut came in handy for Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to oust Prigozhin in an internal Russian power struggle.
Prigozhin’s criticism of the Russian military leadership was not well received. All support packages were cut from February. “The Wagner group is currently wearing itself out in Bachmut and apparently from the Russian point of view they want to achieve exactly that, that the Wagner group is reintegrated into the Russian armed forces in the long term.” Prigozhin should be put in his place. “There seemed to be no choice but to give him a battlefield where he’d been trying for months.”
The mercenaries would have no chance of taking the city without the Russian troops. But for Prigozhin, Bakhmut is apparently above all a symbol: “Prigozhin stylized it into a kind of Stalingrad,” says Pleyer.