The head of the Russian Wagner mercenary company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Thursday that the contracted fighter units are starting to withdraw from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, handing over the positions to regular forces from Moscow.
“We withdrew very carefully,” oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video message posted on the Telegram digital messaging network.
On Sunday, after the announcement of the “total takeover” of Bakhmut, after ten months of fighting, the businessman had already said that the fighters of the Wagner group were going to withdraw as of this Thursday.
According to Prigozhin, the Moscow-contracted fighters will be stationed in “training camps in rear areas.”
“Let’s change positions with the military [Exército da Rússia] and leave behind ammunition and combat rations,” he added.
In an ironic tone, the oligarch said that he “leaves two men hired by the Wagner group” in case the “(Russian) military needs help to defend the positions.”
“Before June 1 we are going to meet, we are going to rest and prepare ourselves. Then we will receive another mission,” said the businessman who appears in the images next to a combat vehicle.
On Wednesday, Prigozhin acknowledged that the Wagner group lost 10,000 prisoners in the Russian prison system in the Ukraine campaign who were recruited to fight on Ukrainian soil.
In a recent interview with Moscow’s official ideologist Konstantin Dolgov, the oligarch admitted to hiring a total of 50 men who were being held in Russian prisons.
Previously, Prigozhin said that between 15,000 and 16,000 men (mercenaries from the Wagner group) had been killed in the Bakhmut campaign.
The Russian oligarch estimated that between 50,000 and 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the battle.
The United States claims that Russia lost around 100,000 fighters in Bakhmut.
The situation regarding the battle for eastern Ukraine has not yet been verified by independent sources.
Source: TSF
