Evgeny Prigozhin blames Wagner Group casualties on Defense Ministry, demands ‘ammo for Wagner’

Evgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group has published a photo of several dozen dead mercenaries. Prigozhin himself explains that all of them were killed on February 21, and that their deaths could have been avoided if not for the scarcity of ammunition supplied by the Defense Ministry.

In an interview to the self-styled “war correspondent” Vladlen Tatarsky, Prigozhin said the daily death toll could have been a fifth of the actual number of mercenaries killed due to poor supply.

Judging by the context, the photo was likely taken near Bakhmut, a locus of fierce combat in Ukraine.

“Who is responsible for their deaths?” Prigozhin asked rhetorically. He then blamed “those who had to make a decision about supplying us with sufficient ammunition,” namely Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu.

The reason for their reluctance to supply the private military company, Prigozhin added, is that “Wagner Group kind of doesn’t exist.”

The group’s founder posted a past ammunitions request addressed to Gerasimov, pointing out that Wagner Group only got a fraction of the supplies it had requested. He says that some high-ranking decision-makers in the Russian military supply the mercenary group without keeping records, even at the risk of facing felony charges.

Prigozhin is calling on patriotic Russians to start a social media campaign demanding “ammo for Wagner.”