MOSCOW: The Wagner Group, a leading Russian mercenary, has announced to pull out from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after what it said: “run out of weapons.”
The Ukrainian government alleged that the mercenaries and Russian troops were reinforcing their positions to take the city back before Russia celebrated World War Two Victory Day in the coming week.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, said that his troops had run out of weapons, according to Reuters.
In a video that accompanied a written withdrawal declaration addressed to Russian military leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, Prigozhin pledged, “My men will not suffer unjustified and pointless losses in Bakhmut without arms and ammunition.”
Despite knowing that Wagner’s target to conquer the city was May 9, the remembrance day of World War Two, the Prigozhin claimed Russian “bureaucrats” had withheld supplies. “It is your problem if, because of your petty jealousy, you don’t want to give the people of Russia the victory of taking Bakhmut,” Prigozhin continued in the video.
Later, the state-run RIA news agency claimed that Sergei Shoigu, the Russian minister of defence, had directed one of his deputy ministers to ensure the Wagner mercenaries had all the required weapons.
The fight for Bakhmut has been the bloodiest of the conflict, with thousands of lives lost during months of gruelling fighting. Russia views Bakhmut as a stepping stone to other cities in Ukraine’s Donbas that are still outside its hands.
Despite recent setbacks, Ukrainian soldiers have remained in the city to cause as many Russian casualties as possible in preparation for Kyiv’s big push against the invading forces along the 1,000 kilometres of the front line.
According to a report from the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff, Bakhmut and Maryinka to the south saw the most intense fighting on Friday.
On Friday, Ukrainian forces encountered more than 30 attacks on the main sectors of the front line. On the Telegram messaging platform, the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, claimed that Russian missiles had hit two factories: one making home furnishings in Sloviansk and heavy machinery in Kramatorsk. He said that neither attack resulted in any injuries.
