Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a screaming, expletive-filled tirade at Putin's war chiefs as
- Yevgeny Prigozhin went ballistic on the Kremlin in an expletive-laden video on Thursday.
- The Wager Group boss said he blamed Russia's defense minister and a top general for a lack of ammo.
- Prigozhin called the pair "animals," saying they were responsible for the deaths of his men.
The Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin released a video on Thursday of him shouting and cursing at the Kremlin's two top officials.
His latest video, published on his press service's Telegram channel, contains the military contractor's harshest public comments about Russia's leaders since the war began.
"Here are the guys from PMC Wagner who died today. The blood is still fresh," Prigozhin said in the video seen by Insider.
"Film them all," he told a cameraman, who pans across a grassy clearing filled with rows of corpses dressed in combat fatigues.
Prigozhin then launches into an expletive-filled tirade against Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, who Putin tasked with running the war in Ukraine.
He swore at least nine times in the video, though his press service censored the expletives.
"We have a 70% ammo shortage! Shoigu! Gerasimov!" Prigozhin said before demanding to know where the ammo for his troops was.
He said military leaders who wouldn't give his troops ammunition would "have their insides eaten in hell."
"You animals are hanging out in expensive clubs," Prigozhin continued. "Your children are enjoying their lives, making videos for YouTube. Do you think that you are the masters of this life and that you have the right to control their lives?"
Prigozhin said that the death toll among his troops would have been five times lower if they had been supplied with enough ammunition.
"They came here as volunteers," he said, referring to the dead men in the video. "And are dying for you to be rolling in clover in your mahogany offices. Keep that in mind!"
Prigozhin — generally seen as a close ally of Putin — repeatedly complained that his troops were running out of supplies, and has accused Russia's top brass of cutting him off and dooming his men in Ukraine.
He said his forces were only receiving a fifth of the shells they needed every day, and that the shortage was costing his men their lives.
On Saturday, Prigozhin said his troops in Bakhmut would either have to "withdraw or die" given the massive ammunition deficit. He later added that Wagner Group had lost more than 100 people in a single day during an assault there.
The fighting has been brutal in the eastern Ukrainian region. Wagner's ground troops, led by Prigozhin, are one of Russia's main forces deployed there. Ukraine and Russia have lost thousands of men in Bakhmut over the last few months, according to Western estimates.
In 2022, the Wagner Group drew criticism for recruiting Russian convicts to fight in Ukraine, promising the prisoners their freedom. Over 40,000 former convicts joined Wagner by July 2022, according to US officials.
Most Wagner soldiers have been ill-equipped and poorly trained, and have died in the fighting, The New York Times reported.
The mercenary group stopped recruiting prisoners in February after a growing number of convicts refused its offer because of Wagner's high rate of casualties, according to local media.
Russia's defense-ministry press service did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
Translation by Oleksandr Vynogradov.
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