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© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.Russia's Wagner boss threatens Bakhmut pullout in Ukraine
By DAVID RISING KYIV, Ukraine©2025 GPlusMedia Inc.
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40 Comments
yamada1043
Mr Prigozhin don’t threaten, just do it. Accelerate the collapse of the Putin rottenhouse of cards.
ok1517
In other news, Russians used again incendiary ammunition in the western Bakhmut area.
Getting ready to leave and turning the area into scorched earth.
All they're so good at: killing, murdering, looting, deporting, raping, destroying.
DeHague is waiting for PUTAin and associates!
Ukraine prevails!
Mark
This is a TRAP for Ukraine and I hope they don't fall into it.
Wagner will NOT pull out especially after all the blood they spelled, and why would Mr. Prigozhin announce it to the world? this is just another war misinfo. this war criminal and butcher is spreading.
JeffLee
Isn't normally the other way around? Ie, the contractors are there to support the army, not the army supporting the contractors. Putin's game plan appears to be a tactical and strategic mess.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Prigo!!! Where you going!?! Where you going, Prigo!?! Don't go, the games not over!!!
nosuke
Sounds like they are baiting and want to set up a trap to the meat grinder
TaiwanIsNotChina
Guess we aren't going to get the fascist greetings from Bakhmut this victory day.
PTownsend
But the Kremlin would not like that, it would affect Russia's latest social engineering project, one in which they save money by sending some of their most violent criminals into front ine positions, thereby ridding Russian society of them and not having to pay for their incarceration. Or maybe Putin wants the Wagners fighting in one of his other many wars, maybe Libya, some other African nation, perhaps Syria.
wallace
Many of the convicts sent to fight in the Wagner group have been killed.
EFD
A: don't let the corpses of the dead you essentially murdered hit you in the ass on the way out.
B: it seems that the Russians ARE having material shortage issues. So much for the mirth of their fan-bois.
C: The ground is shifting under Mini-me when one of his non-state goons can publicly rip him like this.
D: stay away from buildings with windows more than one story tall for the foreseeable future. Mind what you drink as well.
gcbel
Clearly the Ukrainians were right to not withdraw from Bakhmut over the Western advise to do so.
Yrral
Dysfunctional and Insecure people fighting a war is a recipe for disaster,since lots of them lived together as Russian citizens
Rodney
Wagner is a business. He is just after money from the Russian Federation. Russia will have to give in because the town, or what is left of it, is now officially part of the Russian Federation. Smart guy.
EFD
And the insane and the incompetent all seem to be on your hero mini one's side.
Hmmmmmm
GBR48
Prigozhin and Putin depend upon each other, so they both blame the Russian military. At some point, the Russian army - which has not got rich the way Putin's cronies have - may decide that enough is enough, grow a pair, and stage a coup in Moscow. They can feed both Putin and Prigozhin to the West for trial, or just bump them off. In return, power, money and a reset for Russia's relationship with the West. Interesting.
wallace
Wagner group deaths.
"By mid-February Wagner had suffered more than 30,000 casualties in Ukraine, including 9,000 dead, almost all of them convicts. Prigozhin has insisted, however, that the casualty rate among convict fighters is comparable to other Russian units."
EFD
What you are saying here (poorly) is that while you CAN be brought, the midget from Moscow doesn't have enough money to do so.
Yet another thing we can thank Biden and the West for.
You are just getting cranky that your narrative is nothing more than a ponzi scheme reaching its inevitable catastrophic end.
Moonraker
Are they running out of convicts? I thought they were just sending them into battle with broom handles and butter knives anyway.
Desert Tortoise
Mr. Prigozhin is going to "fall" out an upper floor window if he is not more circumspect with his public comments.
Desert Tortoise
Maybe not so smart. Wagner makes its money by skimming revenues from resource extraction in the mostly African nations it is retained to provide "security" for. They sometimes take over gold mines and sell the gold for hard currency. Of course the Russian government gets its cut and Wagner theirs.
The only reason Wagner devoted so many resources to fight in Bakhmut are the hope of controlling the salt and gypsum mines beneath. But the fight has proven much harder than expected and Wagner has probably consumed a lot more of the Russian Army's resources than their commanders wish to give him, just so one guy can add to his wealth by selling salt and gypsum. Meanwhile a whole lot of Russian convicts died trying to secure Mr. Prigozhin's wealth, probably in futility.
Desert Tortoise
Something tells me that Wagner has painted itself into a corner in Bakhmut. I do not think they dare leave or risk being Mr. Prigozhin and his officers being tried and probably executed for desertion during a war while his soldiers would be put under the command of the Russian Army.
ClippetyClop
Some Putinoids here have been telling us that Prigozhin's rants are just a way of drawing more Ukranians into a trap. Apparently it's a cunning ruse, just like the disastrous attempt to sieze Kyiv was.
In fact, the whole war is going really well apparently, and not a complete bloody shambles like it appears to the casual observer.
Russia needs more world class leaders and less world class actors.
lincolnman
I'm still convinced the drone attack in Moscow yesterday was a Putin/FSB false flag op...but Prigozhin here is just one of the many Kremlin insiders that would benefit from Putin being taken down...
A short range quad copter attack? Could be easily arranged by him or his troops...
stormcrow
What a screwed up military machine!
It's like watching a weird black soap opera comedy.
Desert Tortoise
I think it more likely the drones were operated by Russian anti-war partisans taking a cue from their Belarusian comrades who popped that Russian AWACS aircraft on Belarusian airfield with an explosive laden quadcopter.
geronimo2006
Would not be half surprised if he winds up poisoned or something. If not Putin hinself someone in the army. Read somewhere he's setting himself up as a potential candidate against Putin if the expected Ukraine counter offensive succeeds. He is popular amongst the hardcore ultranationalists. And an even worse human being, if that's possible.
rainyday
Day 436: the caterer who leads our army of enslaved prisoners has released another video of himself standing in the middle of a huge pile of rotting corpses of his own men. He is threatening to withdraw from Bakmhut, the city whose pre-war population is smaller than the number of casualties we’ve taken in unsuccessfully trying to take it.
Everything continues to proceed exactly according to Putin’s plan. The West will surely fold at any minute in awe at how well things are going on our side, and how none of their actions are having any effect on us at all. Everything is normal here.
Sven Asai
That’s only for show and misleading or overestimated propaganda. Also the usage of those bad vulgar vocabulary in public isn’t anything special there, like they for example use the wth, wtf , b, p or f* words on a regular daily base in all conversations or movies in the English speaking world.
fallaffel
How do you know they are anarchists or separatists?
wallace
Just watched his angry ranting video.
TaiwanIsNotChina
If you are holding or operating a Russian weapon you aren't innocent in this conflict unless you are trying to figure out how to use it on your superiors.
I'm not the one saying stealing things is what Russians are good for in life. I bet you also had disgraceful things to say encouraging Russian atrocities against westerners found in Ukraine.
Plenty of people got what I was going after.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Plenty of people are able to see the greater good of Putin accidentally ingesting something that proves fatal. Or standing too close to a window, but he probably watches out for that.
TokyoLiving
With or without Wagner group, Russia will win this war..