Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the renowned mercenary group and its financier, backed down from his ultimatum to withdraw his troops from the Bakhmut region after getting a commitment from the government, according to an audio recording made public on Sunday.
“We were given the command to fight last night. They guarantee to provide us with all the guns and ammo we require to carry out our activities, stated Prigozhin.
“We are told that we can act in Artiomovsk (the Soviet name for Bakhmut) as we see fit and that everything necessary will be provided to our flanks (around Bakhmut) so that the enemy does not break through,” he said.
Prigozhin slammed the leadership of the Russian army in a video message that was made public on Friday, and he threatened to withdraw his forces from Bakhmut, the core of the combat in Ukraine, if they did not receive greater material support.
In addition, he charged that the high command was to blame for the “tens of thousands” of deaths and injuries of Russians in Ukraine, where a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive backed by Western-supplied weapons looms.
On Saturday, the billionaire requested that the Bakhmut operations be turned over to Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechen forces.
Yevgeny Prigozhin wrote the Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu, in a letter that was made public by his press office. “I ask you to issue a battle order on the transfer, before midnight on 10 May, of the positions of the Wagner group to the units of the Akhmat battalion in the locality of Bakhmut and its surroundings,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said.
The commander of Wagner claimed that the general staff had only given him 32% of the ammunition he had asked for since October and that this request was being made “because of a long shortage of ammunition.”
