Russia Ukraine war latest news: Wagner chief warns Putin his troops will leave Bakhmut

Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Russia‘s Wagner Group mercenary force, said in a sudden and dramatic announcement on Friday that his forces would leave the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut that they have been trying to capture since last summer.

Prigozhin said they would leave on May 10 because of heavy losses and inadequate ammunition supplies.

“I declare on behalf of the Wagner fighters, on behalf of the Wagner command, that on May 10, 2023, we are obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the defence ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds,” Prigozhin said in a statement.

“I’m pulling Wagner units out of Bakhmut because in the absence of ammunition they’re doomed to perish senselessly.”

Wagner has been spearheading Russia‘s attempt to capture Bakhmut since last summer, in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war in Ukraine.

It was not clear if Prigozhin’s statement could be taken at face value, as he has frequently posted impulsive comments in the past. Only last week he withdrew one statement he said he had made as a “joke”.

His latest one followed an expletive-filled video published early on Friday in which Prigozhin, surrounded by dozens of corpses he said were Wagner fighters, yelled and swore at Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov. He said they were to blame for Wagner’s losses because they had starved it of ammunition.

The pace of shipments from Ukraine under a U.N.-backed initiative has slowed as concerns grow over ships getting stuck if a deal is not renewed later this month, according to sources and data.

Russia, which is one of the key parties involved, said it will keep talking although Moscow has threatened to quit on May 18, which has created more uncertainty for traders and shipping companies trying to plan ahead.

Under the accord, Ukraine has been able to export some 29.5 million tonnes of agricultural products, including 14.9 million tonnes of corn and 8.1 million tonnes of wheat.

However, the number of ships coming in to pick up cargoes has dropped this week to two vessels a day from three to four ships on average daily in the past three weeks, data from the agreement’s joint coordination centre showed.

Danish shipping group NORDEN, which is active in transporting grains, is among companies not sending ships into the region.

“We are not participating in that trade at the moment … It is a risky area – it is very hard to predict what will happen,” NORDEN’s Chief Executive Jan Rindbo told Reuters.

“Things can change quickly … from the time you agree to go in and pick up a cargo and until the time the ship actually arrives.”

Every shipment takes on average at least nine days currently and involves sailing into one of three Ukrainian ports involved in the pact and undergoing required inspections.

A Ukrainian leader assaulted a Russian delegate who ripped Ukraine’s national flag out of his hands during a summit in Ankara on Thursday, according to reports.

Ukrainian leader Oleksandr Marikovski was seen unfurling the national flag of his country as Russian delegate Olga Timofeeva was being interviewed.

On seeing this, the Russian team member Valery Stavitsky was seen approaching Mr Marikovski and ripping the flag out of his hands.

The two delegates had gathered at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation.

As the Russian delegate walked away, the Ukrainian MP charged at him and landed a couple of blows as other people present at the venue tried to intervene.

Former Russian deputy defence minister Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev has joined the Wagner Group private militia as a deputy commander, Russian pro-war social media channels reported on Thursday.

In two videos posted by war correspondent Alexander Simonov on Telegram, Mizintsev – clad in Wagner-branded combat gear – was shown visiting a training camp and touring Russian positions in the east Ukrainian town of Bakhmut.

The footage coincided with the release of two video statements by Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, who furiously renewed long-standing accusations that the defence establishment was starving his forces of ammunition from jealousy of their success.

While Prigozhin has regularly accused the mainstream military including Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu of incompetence, he has singled out individual commanders for praise.

On April 29, Prigozhin’s press service said he had offered to take on Mizintsev, the day after his reported sacking by the Defence Ministry.

Mizintsev, who orchestrated the siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in the early months of the war last year, had only been made deputy defence minister in charge of logistics and supplies last September.

Grey Zone, a strongly followed Telegram channel affiliated with Wagner, wrote that Mizintsev had become “not the first and obviously not the last general who was out of place amid the bureaucracy and sycophancy”.

The European Union imposed sanctions on Mizintsev in June, calling him the “Butcher of Mariupol” for his role in the siege, which devastated the city.

Prigozhin did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Russia‘s Security Council is likely to discuss later on Friday what the Kremlin has described as an attempted Ukrainian drone attack on President Vladimir Putin, a Kremlin spokesman said.

Kyiv has denied it was behind the incident, which took place in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Russia, which has also accused the United States of being behind the attack, something Washington has rejected, has said it reserves the right to retaliate.

Bakhmut, a town of 70,000 people before the start of the war, has taken on huge symbolic importance for both sides because of the sheer intensity and duration of the fighting there.

The Wagner withdrawal was announced in a statement addressed to the head of general staff, the defence ministry, and President Vladimir Putin as supreme commander.

It was accompanied by a video from Prigozhin in which he appeared in full combat gear in front of dozens of his fighters, an automatic rifle dangling from his shoulder.

“Because of the lack of ammunition, our losses are increasing exponentially every day,” the statement said.

“My lads will not suffer useless and unjustified losses in Bakhmut without ammunition,” Prigozhin added in the video.

“If, because of your petty jealousy, you do not want to give the Russian people the victory of taking Bakhmut, that’s your problem.”

The statement also asked Russia‘s Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov to replace Wagner forces in Bakhmut with Russian troops.

The head of Russia‘s Wagner mercenary group has said he will be withdrawing his troops from the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in a row over support from Vladimir Putin’s government.

The group founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin – a Putin ally – has been spearheading Russia’s attempt to capture Bakhmut since last summer, in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war in Ukraine.

“I declare on behalf of the Wagner fighters, on behalf of the Wagner command, that on 10 May, we are obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the defence ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds,” Mr Prigozhin said in a statement.

“I’m pulling Wagner units out of Bakhmut because in the absence of ammunition they’re doomed to perish senselessly.”

Dramatic footage captures the moment a Ukrainian delegate punched his Russian counterpart in the face during a meeting of Black Sea nations in Turkey on Thursday, 4 May.

The brawl broke out after MP Oleksandr Marikovski unfurled the Ukrainian flag behind Russian politician Olga Timofeeva, as she was being interviewed at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC).

Earlier during the assembly, a scuffle broke out between Ukrainian and Russian delegations as Ukrainians tried to stage a protest next to Ms Timofeeva as she was due to speak.

Record high water levels could overwhelm a major dam in southern Ukraine and damage parts of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, a Russian official told Tass agency on Thursday.

Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the general director of nuclear energy firm Rosenergoatom, said if the Nova Kakhovka dam did rupture, the power cable line for the Zaporizhzhia plant’s pumping stations would be flooded.

“This (would create) functional problems for the operation of the plant and risks for nuclear safety,” he told Tass.

Last November, after Russian forces withdrew from the nearby southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, satellite imagery showed significant new damage to the dam.

Both sides have accused each other of planning to breach the dam using explosives, which would flood much of the area downstream and would likely cause major destruction around Kherson.

Karchaa’s comments represent a significant contrast from those made in late March by Ukrainian officials, who said they feared the Zaporizhzhia facility could face a shortage of water to cool reactors by late summer because Russian forces had let water out of a reservoir that supplied the plant.

Russian troops took over the plant as they invaded parts of Ukraine last year. It is at the centre of a nuclear security crisis due to near-constant shelling in its vicinity which Kyiv and Moscow blame on each other.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that Wednesday’s drone incident at the Kremlin was a “hostile act” and Russia would respond with “concrete actions”.

Russia has accused Ukraine of firing drones at the Kremlin in an attempt to kill President Vladimir Putin, and said the United States was behind the purported attack. Ukraine has denied that, and the White House has dismissed Russian “lies”.

“It was clearly a hostile act, it is clear that the Kyiv terrorists could not have committed it without the knowledge of their masters,” Lavrov told a press conference in India.

“We will not respond by talking about ‘casus belli’ or not, we will respond with concrete actions,” he said.

“Casus belli” is a Latin term for an action that provides justification for war. Russia‘s war in Ukraine is now in its 15th month, though Moscow continues to describe it as a “special military operation”.