The Wagner Gropu’s leader says he won’t pull his troops from Bakhmut….
(I do NOT think he’d last too long if he did so and put Putin in a bad place)
He’s got word he’ll get more ammo….
That may NOY matter if the Ukraine Spring ‘offense’ troops are as good as some think they are….
Everybody is waiting?
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant IS probably gonna be a goal of the Ukraine offense coming…..
The Crimea is coming under drone attack by the Ukraine….
Chechen forces could replace the Wagner Group in Bakhmut?
Russia’s economy will suffer from the conflict with the Ukraine and it’s fallout in the West gainst Russia….
Were is Putin?
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said on Sunday that he had been promised as much ammunition and weaponry as needed to continue the fight for the embattled Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, two days after he threatened to withdraw his fighters because Moscow’s Ministry of Defense was failing to support them.
“We have been promised as much ammunition and armament as we need to keep going,” the Wagner group’s founder, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, said in an audio statement released Sunday on his channel on the Telegram messaging app. There was no immediate comment from Russia’s defense ministry.
On Friday, Mr. Prigozhin launched what was widely considered an effort at brinkmanship, by threatening to withdraw all of his fighters from Bakhmut, accusing Russia’s military bureaucracy of starving him of the ammunition needed to fully capture the city. He had appeared in a gruesome video standing in front of row after row of what he said were freshly killed fighters, saying the ministry had caused “useless and unjustified” losses by failing to replenish the ammunition stocks.
While Mr. Prigozhin had complained about ammunition shortages and threatened to pull out of the city before, he had not previously given a date. This time, he named Wednesday — the day after Russia’s Victory Day holiday — as the date when his forces would withdraw and “lick their wounds.” The May 9 holiday celebrates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany and has taken on particular resonance in Russia amid its war in Ukraine….
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Whether the ammunition promised to Mr. Prigozhin can be deployed fast enough to change the battle for the city that started last August is an open question. In threatening to withdraw, Mr. Wagner stressed just how weary his men were of the fight, ready to retreat from the front lines to regroup and recuperate.
But the chances of that seem remote. Ukraine is expected to soon begin a counteroffensive powered by fresh supplies of advanced Western military equipment, including tanks and armored personnel carriers that have already arrived in the country…..
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“We are promised to be given ammunition and weapons as much as we need to continue further actions,” Prigozhin said, adding that he had been granted the power to fight “as we see fit.”
The dispute among pro-Russian forces in Bakhmut is a flash point in the broader rift between Wagner and Russia’s Defense Ministry — one that has increasingly played out in public in recent months.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
- The situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is becoming “increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous” due to increased military activity in the area, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agencysaid in a statement. Agency officials “have received information that the announced evacuation of residents from the nearby town of Enerhodar — where most plant staff live — has started,” Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said.
- Ukraine’s air force claimed to have successfully shot down one of Russia’s most sophisticated conventional weapons using a U.S.-made Patriot air defense missile. The Kinzhal, or “dagger,” hypersonic missile travels at low altitudes many times the speed of sound — too quick for Ukraine’s traditional air defenses to even react.
- Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, confirmed a Romanian report that a Polish border guard aircraft was intercepted on Friday by a Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter plane over the Black Sea. The “aggressive and dangerous maneuvers repeatedly performed” by the Russian plane “generated a high level of turbulence” that made it hard for the Polish aircraft to maintain control,” the Romanian Defense Ministry said in a statement Saturday. “This incident is further evidence of the provocative approach of the Russian Federation in the Black Sea,” the ministry added.
- Russia is preparing for its annual Victory Day parade on May 9, which marks the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. Photos from the Associated Press from Sunday showed soldiers, including some guiding tanks and missiles, carrying out a dress rehearsal at Moscow’s Red Square.
- Local officials in Crimea — the peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 — claimed to have repelled a string of drone attacks by Ukraine overnight. “In total, more than 10 drones were sent to the Crimea” and the port of Sevastopol, the city’s Russia-installed governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev, wrote on Telegram early Sunday. No damage was recorded, he said.
- A 72-year-old woman was killed after Russian forces shelled the southern city of Nikopol overnight, local military administrator Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram on Sunday. Two others were also injured in the shelling, he said, which damaged seven homes and a high-rise building.
- Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said his forces are ready to take over in the brutal battle for Bakhmut and are awaiting orders from Putin. He also expressed confidence that it would be possible to “liberate” the city in the near future. Prigozhin, the Wagner founder, had previously called for his mercenaries to be replaced at midnight on Wednesday.
- Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said Sunday that Moscow shelled two villages in his southern port city, Yantarne and Kizomys. The blasts injured a 62-year-old woman and destroyed seven buildings and three homes, he wrote in a Telegram post.
- A pro-Kremlin writer wounded in a car explosion in Russia is in stable condition after being taken out of an induced coma, state-run Tass news reported. Zakhar Prilepin, 47, a fervent supporter of Putin’s war, was driving when he was injured by an explosive device that had been placed under the passenger seat of his car, where his friend and assistant was sitting, Prilepin said on Telegram. The explosion killed his friend, and broke both Prilepin’s legs, he said. He added that he dropped his daughter out of the car five minutes before the explosion. Without providing evidence, Russia’s Foreign Ministry blamed Kyiv’s Western backers for the explosion in a village east of Moscow. Ukraine did not confirm or deny any role in the attack.
- Russia’s economy is likely suffering from its worst shortage of labor in decades, the British Ministry of Defense said Sunday. “Mobilization, historically high emigration, and an aging and shrinking population is limiting the labor supply,” intelligence officials said. Partly due to the war, up to 1.3 million people exited Russia in 2022, according to the update, which suggested the shortage was constraining the Russian economy’s capacity for growth….