Ukrainian military personnel on the ground say the alleged lack of ammunition is an excuse to hide the high casualty figures of the Wagner group. Only in Bakhmut there will be 20 thousand.
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Ukraine has doubts that the alleged lack of weapons of the Wagner group is real. According to a Ukrainian commander in the Bakhmut region, the constant shelling offers no evidence that the mercenary group is actually experiencing a shortage of weapons.
“The enemy is trying to carry out these attacks 24/7. We did not realize that they lacked weapons as they say. I think it’s the opposite: the intensity of the shelling has only increased.”, Commander Ihor Shepetin said in an interview with Ukrainian television, quoted by CNN International.
Yevgeny Prigozhin has repeatedly criticized the Kremlin, which he accuses of not supplying the Wagner group with weapons for operations in Ukraine. Recently, the organization’s leader even said that he was going to withdraw his troops from Bakhmut this week, a position he abandoned after the Kremlin agreed to supply more weapons on Sunday.
The Wagner group and the Chechen leader reportedly “blackmailed” the Kremlin to get more ammunition and keep the mercenaries in Bakhmut.
Shepetin said that he did not believe Prigozhin’s statements, which he considered an attempt to “mislead” the Ukrainian army. “I think the enemy is already desperate. He is using all means at his disposal to try to drive our defense forces out of Bakhmut. But the enemy is not making it, and he will not make it. The Ukrainian military also added that the troops in the city are not at risk of being encircled (although he admits that the Kiev forces are experiencing “some logistical problems”).
Shepetin’s opinion was confirmed by the spokesman of the Eastern command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “The Russians are not short of ammunition. It’s not true at all”said Serhii Cherevaty in another interview. The spokesman said that in the last 24 hours alone, Ukrainian positions had been shelled more than 400 times, with Russian forces using on average “more than 25,000 rounds per day” at Bakhmut, Lyman and Kupyansk.
For the eastern command, the lack of ammunition is nothing more than an excuse to hide the real problem: the high number of casualties of the Wagner group (Ukraine speaks of 20,000 deaths in Bakhmut alone). “[Prigozhin] he makes up this nonsense about the munitions crisis. However, his main problem is the constant annihilation of personnel by our forces. So, he can’t renew his staff because he can’t recruit people from prisons,” Cherevaty defended.
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Source: Observadora
