KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The owner of Russia’s Wagner Group military contractor threatened today to pull his troops out of the protracted battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut next week, accusing Russia’s military command of starving his forces of ammunition and causing them heavy losses. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a notorious millionaire with longtime links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed that Wagner had planned to capture Bakhmut by May 9. But, Prigozhin said, his force hasn’t received enough artillery ammunition supplies from the Russian military since Monday. It is not the first time Prigozhin has raged about ammunition shortages and blamed Russia’s military, with which he has long been in conflict. He has already threatened to withdraw from Bakhmut once, in an interview with a Russian military blogger last week, if the situation with ammunition doesn’t improve.
