(Reuters) – Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force, said on Thursday that his troops had begun receiving additional supplies of ammunition after a public row with Russia’s top army brass.
“Today at 6 am, it was announced that the shipment of ammunition has started,” Prigozhin said in a statement on Telegram.
“Most likely, the ball is now rolling. So far, it’s all on paper, but, as we were told, the principal documents have already been signed.”
A onetime catering entrepreneur who once shunned the public spotlight, Prigozhin has assumed an more public role since the start of the war in Ukraine a year ago, with his Wagner Group spearheading Russia’s months-long battle for the town of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
In recent days, a long-standing feud with Russia’s military bosses escalated dramatically, with Prigozhin claiming that officials were denying Wagner ammunition out of personal animus to him.
On Tuesday, he accused Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov of “treason”, claiming they were behind the shortages.
In a Tuesday voice message, an angry and emotional Prigozhin said: “The chief of the general staff and the defence minister are giving orders right and left not just not to give Wagner PMC ammunition, but not to help it with air transport”.
In his message on Thursday, Prigozhin wrote: “Many thanks to those who acted various ways – to those ordinary citizens who did everything they could, and to those, including those in high offices, who exerted pressure and made decisions … so that they began to give us ammunition. Thank you. Thank you from the lads.”
During his annual state of the nation address on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged an end to internal rivalries on the Russian side.
“We must get rid of – I want to emphasise this – any interdepartmental contradictions, formalities, grudges, misunderstandings, and other nonsense,” Putin told the political and military elite.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
