Wagner Group threatens withdrawal as drone attack targets Crimea

German Press Agency

MOSCOW – The head of the Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has threatened to withdraw his troops from the embattled city of Bakhmut in Ukraine amid high casualty rates, while a fuel depot on Crimea caught fire after a probable drone attack.

“Every day we have stacks of thousands of bodies that we put in coffins and send home,” Prigozhin said in an interview with Russian military blogger Semyon Pegov published on Saturday.

Losses were five times higher than necessary because of the lack of artillery ammunition, Prigozhin said.

The Wagner chief said he has written to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu asking for supplies as soon as possible. “If the ammunition deficit is not replenished, we are forced – in order not to run like cowardly rats afterwards – to either withdraw or die,” the 61-year-old asserted.

Prigozhin said he would probably be forced to withdraw some of his troops but warned that this would mean that the front would collapse elsewhere.

There has been fighting over Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine for months. Casualties are high on both sides. The Ukrainian defenders control only a small area in the west of the city.

Kyiv said Moscow would fail in its effort to cut off Bakhmut from Ukrainian supply routes.

“The Russians have been talking for several weeks about conquering the ‘road of life’ as well as keeping fire control over it. In reality, everything is different,” a spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Serhiy Cherevaty, told online outlet zn.ua on Saturday.

Although the connecting road from Bakhmut to Chasiv Yar is being fought over, the Russians are not succeeding in disrupting the logistics of the defenders, Cherevaty said. The information could not be independently verified.

The supply of provisions, weapons and ammunition is secured, Cherevaty explained. The Ukrainian forces were maintaining their positions along the road and engineers had already laid new roads to Bakhmut. “All this allows us to continue holding Bakhmut,” he said.

In its situation report, the Ukrainian general staff also spoke of “unsuccessful attempts” by Russian forces to make gains in the area.

Meanwhile, a fuel tank caught fire in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol on Saturday morning following what was thought to have been a drone attack, the Russian-installed Gov. Mikhail Razvozhayev wrote on Telegram, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.

Razvozhayev said an area of 1,000 square meters (1,200 square yards) had been engulfed in flames, triggering “the most severe of all possible” alarm levels – level four. The flames were extinguished by the afternoon.

There were no deaths or injuries.

There were varying reports on the extend of the damage. Razvozhayev told Russian media that the fire had spread to four cisterns.

“The fire does not affect fuel supplies for Sevastopol,” he said earlier. “These reserves were not used for petrol station deliveries,” he added – suggesting that the fuel depot was being used for military purposes.

Ukrainian military intelligence said that 10 oil tanks were destroyed, without assuming responsibility for the attack. At the same time, authority spokesman Andriy Yusov stressed that such explosions will continue.

According to Yusov, the fuel depot is used by the Russian Black Sea Fleet stationed in Crimea.

Parallel to the attack on Sevastopol, other objects in Crimea were also targeted, according to Sergei Axyonov, the Moscow-appointed governor of the peninsula. Two drones were intercepted by air defense, he said.

According to Sevastopol Gov. Razvozhayev, the remains of two drones were found at the fuel reservoir. But only one had reached the fuel depot, the other had been shot down on approach, he said.

Ukraine has repeatedly declared its intention to retake the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014 to international outcry.

Violent drone incidents have occurred several times there in the course of Russia’s current 14-month-old all-out invasion, sometimes causing severe damage, injuries and deaths.

Some observers saw the air strike as a preparation for the Ukrainian counteroffensive that has been expected for weeks. “The enemy is looking for gaps in our air defenses and using drones to do so,” Yuri Knutov, director of Russia’s Air Defence Museum, told Russian media.

During the May holidays, such attacks could increase to damage logistics and Russian supply lines, he warned.

The Ukrainian army used similar tactics to prepare their offensives last summer. The shelling of important fuel depots and ammunition depots in the hinterland with HIMARS missiles significantly weakened the Russian army at that time.

In response, Knutov called for massive attacks against the Ukrainian cities of Mykolaiv and Ochakiv, where the Ukrainian fleet is based. “Kyiv must realize that our retaliatory strikes are much more painful than their attacks,” the military expert said.