Global Courant 2023-05-05 10:04:59
An enraged Yevgeny Prigozhin yells at Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov.Screenshot/Press Service of Prigozhin/Telegram
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin went ballistic on the Kremlin on Thursday in an expletive-laden video.
He lashed out at Russia’s defense minister and a top general, accusing them of a lack of ammunition.
Prigozhin called the pair “animals” and said they were responsible for the deaths of his men.
Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin released a video on Thursday of him yelling and cursing at the two top Kremlin officials.
His latest video, published on the Telegram channel of his press service, contains the military contractor’s harshest public comments on the Russian leadership since the beginning of the war.
“Here are the guys from PMC Wagner who died today. The blood is still fresh,” Prigozhin says in the video, seen by Insider.
“Film them all,” he tells a cameraman, swinging across a grassy clearing lined with rows of corpses dressed in battle gear.
Prigozhin then launches into a tirade of expletives against Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, whom Putin was tasked with leading the war in Ukraine.
He swore at least nine times in the video, though his press office censored the expletives.
“We’re 70% short of ammunition! Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where’s the (beep) ammunition?” Prigozhin screams in the video.
He shouted that military leaders who wouldn’t give his troops ammunition would have their guts eaten in hell.
“You beasts hang out in expensive clubs,” continued an indignant Prigozhin. “Your kids are enjoying their lives and making videos for YouTube. Do you think you are in control of this life and you have the right to control their lives?”
Prigozhin claimed that the death toll among his troops would have been five times lower if they had been supplied with sufficient ammunition.
“They came here as volunteers,” he said, referring to the dead men in the video. “And I can’t wait to roll into your mahogany offices in clover. Keep that in mind!’
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Normally a close ally of Putin, Prigozhin now repeatedly complains that his troops have run out of supplies, and accused Russia’s top of cutting him off and damning his men in Ukraine.
He said his forces get only one-fifth of the shells they need each day. and that the shortage costs his men their lives.
On Saturday, Prigozhin said his troops in Bakhmut would have to withdraw or die. given the huge ammunition shortage. He later added that his organization had lost more than 100 people in one day during an attack there.
Having the fights brutal in the eastern Ukrainian region. Wagner’s ground forces, led by Prigozhin, are one of the main Russian forces deployed there. According to Western estimates, both Kiev and Moscow have lost thousands of men in Bakhmut in recent months.
In 2022, the Wagner Group sparked a scandal for recruiting Russian convicts to fight in Ukraine, promising the prisoners their freedom. More than 40,000 former convicts joined Wagner in July 2022, according to US officials.
Most of the Wagner soldiers were ill-equipped and poorly trained and died in the fighting. according to The New York Times.
The mercenary group stopped recruiting prisoners in February realized that convicts began to view the offer as a death sentence and refused to sign, according to local media.
The press office of the Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment, which was sent outside of regular business hours.
Translation by Oleksandr Vynogradov.
Read the original article Business Insider
