Prigozhin declared his readiness to hand over positions in Bakhmut to the “Kadyrovs”

The founder of PMC “Wagner” Yevgeny Prigozhin said that he is ready to hand over the positions of his formation in Bakhmut to fighters of the Chechen battalion “Akhmat”. This was reported by Prigozhin’s press service on Saturday.

She published Prigozhin’s official letter addressed to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu with a request to ensure the transfer of the positions in Bakhmut occupied by the PMC “Wagner” to the “Akhmat” battalion by May 10. The head of the PMC also asserts that supposedly “a little more than two square kilometers” remain in Bakhmut under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and expresses confidence that “Akhmat” will manage to take the city.

On May 5, Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that the fighters of PMC “Wagner” would leave Bakhmut on May 10. The reason for this, according to him, is “shell hunger”. He recorded a video against the background of the corpses of the mercenaries killed in Bakhmut, and in fact blamed the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov for their deaths.

In the evening of the same day, Kadyrov wrote in a telegram that fighters of the Chechen special forces unit “Akhmat” are ready to occupy positions in Bakhmut. The detachment participated in the storming of Mariupol in the spring of last year.

“I thank Ramzan Akhmatovich for the fact that he agreed, having, most likely, the opportunity to obtain everything necessary and all the necessary resources, to take our positions in Bakhmut,” Prigozhin said in a message.

• Russian troops have been storming Bakhmut in the Donetsk region since the fall of last year. The entire garden has still not been taken. Prigozhin claims that only fighters of PMC “Wagner” participate in city battles.
• On May 2, the coordinator of strategic communications at the US National Security Council, John Kirby, citing American intelligence, said that Russia had lost 20,000 dead in the fighting in eastern Ukraine over the last five months of the full-scale invasion, half of them “Wagnerovs”. The Russian Defense Ministry does not report losses.
• In March, experts reported that there was a rift between the head of Chechnya and the head of PMC “Wagner” due to Prigozhin’s criticism of the leadership of the Ministry of Defense. Before that, Kadyrov himself criticized the Russian command in Ukraine, blaming the failure of the defense in Donbass and demanding personnel changes in the top military leadership of the Russian army. However, after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the head of Chechnya abruptly changed his opinion. On the same day, in his Telegram channel, he praised the Ministry of Defense and its head, Sergei Shoigu, as well as the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, saying that the Russian military is following “wise tactics” in the military operations in Ukraine.
• A few weeks ago, however, Kadyrov announced another meeting with Prigozhin, calling him “brother” in his message.