The leader of the Wagner Group said that if his pro-Russian mercenaries retreated to Bakhmut “the whole front would collapse”.

The head of the Russian mercenary company Wagner, the businessman Yevgeny PrigozhinHe warned that if his troops withdrew from Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine, “the whole front would collapse”.

“If the private military company Wagner withdraws from Bakhmut, the whole front will collapse.Prigozhin said in a video posted on YouTube, adding that the collapse could reach “up to the borders of Russia and, perhaps, beyond”.

“The situation will not be good for all military formations that protect Russian interests,” he added.

In a nearly four-minute video posted on Wagner’s Telegram channel on Saturday, Prigozhin said his troops feared the government would want to make them potential scapegoats if Russia lost the war.

He pointed out that the Wagners, on the one hand, “they attract the entire Ukrainian army and do not allow it to concentrate on other sectors of the front”.

” And on the other hand, we advance and the others (the soldiers) are obliged to follow us so as not to be portrayedsaid Prigozhin, considered close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Wagner’s boss indicated that his men still do not receive the promised ammunition by the Russian Defense Ministry.

“Regarding ammunition: in the afternoon of February 22, the documents were signed, on February 23 the dispatch orders were issued, but until today, little ammunition has been dispatched,” said he said in a comment posted last night on Telegram. .

Prigozhin indicated that he is trying to find out the cause of this delay, if it is “mere bureaucracy or betrayal”.

The mercenary leader regularly criticizes Russian defense chiefs and high-ranking generals. Last month he accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and others of “treason” for denying his men ammunition supplies.

The Wagners, in whose ranks thousands of prisoners are fighting, They are the main assault force attacking Bakhmut, an important communications center, connected by roads to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the largest cities in the Donetsk region controlled by Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine’s President Volodímir Zelensky has said his forces will defend Bakhmut “as long as it is reasonable”, so it cannot be ruled out that Ukrainian troops will leave the town, where some 4,500 of the 70,000 inhabitants she previously counted the outbreak of the conflict remains.

A Russian victory at Bakhmut, with a pre-war population of around 70,000, I would give it to him first grand prix in a costly winter offensive, after calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists last year. Russia sees this as a springboard to complete the seizure of the Donbass industrial region, one of its most important goals.

Volodimir Nazarenko, commander of Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut, said there had been no withdrawal order and that “the defense is holding out” in dire conditions.

(With information from EFE and Reuters)

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