| Wagner mercenaries will stay in Bakhmut |
| Yevgeny Prigozhin, who leads the Russian mercenary group called Wagner, said that he had been promised as much weaponry as needed to continue the fight for the embattled Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, two days after he threatened to withdraw his fighters by Wednesday because Moscow’s Ministry of Defense was failing to support them. |
| On Friday, Prigozhin accused Russia’s military bureaucracy of withholding the ammunition needed to fully capture the city. He appeared in a gruesome video standing in front of what he said were freshly killed fighters, saying that the ministry had caused “useless and unjustified” losses by failing to replenish the ammunition stocks. |
| Only a sliver of Bakmut remains in Ukrainian hands, and Russia is trying to seize the city by tomorrow. All the territory Russia has gained during months of grinding conflict there has come at an enormous cost for both sides, including the deaths of thousands of fighters recruited by Wagner from Russian prisons and thrown right onto the battlefield. |
| Context: Few military analysts expected Prigozhin to carry out his threat to withdraw, especially because the Ministry of Defense has no real alternative to the estimated 10,000 Wagner fighters battling for control of the devastated city, where 70,000 people lived before the invasion. |
| In other news from the war: |
| Ukraine launched a wave of drone attacks at the occupied Crimean Peninsula, Russia said.Ukraine is feeling immense pressure from Western allies to succeed in its looming counteroffensive. |
