JAKARTA - The founder of the Russian mercenary troop, Wagner says his troops, who are now tightening their grip on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut but are short on ammunition, will make the entire front line in Ukraine collapse if they pull back.
"If Wagner withdraws from Bakhmut now, the whole front will collapse," Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video published over the weekend, reported by Reuters on March 6.
"The situation will not be pleasant for all the military formations protecting Russia's interests," he continued.
Reuters was unable to independently verify when and where the video was recorded. The recording was published on a Telegram channel which has spread Prigozhin's news and linked him to the Wagner Group.
However, the video was not published on the Prigozhin press service channel in the usual way.
Earlier, Prigozhin on Friday said his military units had "practically surrounded Bakhmut," where fighting has intensified in the past week with Russian troops attacking from almost all sides.
However, on Sunday he complained that most of the ammunition promised by Moscow to his troops in February had not been delivered.
"For now, we are trying to find out the reason: is it just plain bureaucracy or treason," Prigozhin said on the Telegram channel he normally uses for press services.
This mercenary chief regularly criticized Russia's top defense chiefs and generals. Last month, he accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and others of "treason" for withholding ammunition supplies for his militias.
In a nearly four-minute video published on the Wagner Orchestra Telegram channel on Saturday, Prigozhin said his troops were worried that Moscow wanted to make them scapegoats if Russia lost the war.
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"If we withdraw, then we will go down in history forever as a people who have taken a major step towards losing the war," said Prigozhin.
"This is the problem with ammunition starvation," he said.
Speaking from a bunker, Prigozhin said in the video his troops would wonder if they were being "set up" to lose by the country's top brass or even by someone "higher up".
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