'Loud mouth' Prigozhin's public feuding with Russia's military leaders is an effort to blame the Kremlin for Wagner's failures in Bakhmut, military expert says
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Erin Snodgrass
May 17, 2023, 05:49 IST
Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin attends the funeral of his fighters at the Beloostrovskoye cemetery outside St. Petersburg, Russia, on December 24, 2022.AP Photo
Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russia's military brass have been locked in a public feud for months
Meanwhile, Prigozhin's Wagner Group troops have sustained significant losses in Bakhmut.
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Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, has publicly escalated his feud with Russia's military brass in recent weeks, shaming the country's defense leaders and threatening to withdraw his troops from the frontline, all in an attempt to paint himself in a flattering light, military experts posited.
"I think Prigozhin is playing a political, as well as a military game," Simon Miles, an assistant professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy and a historian of the Soviet Union and US-Soviet relations, told Insider.
Wagner troops have played an outsized role in the battle of Bakhmut, Russia's monthslong assault in Ukraine's east where the fighting has grown so ruthless it has become known as "the meat grinder."
For months, Wagner troops have borne the brunt of the attritional fighting in Bakhmut as the frontlines grinded to a brutal stalemate. The White House in February said Wagner troops had suffered 30,000 casualties since the war began in February 2022.
"Prigozhin has spent the last seven to eight months trying to capture Bakhmut and still hasn't done it," Ben Hodges, a retired lieutenant general and former commander of US Army Europe, told Insider earlier this month.
"All the resources that have been expended, the lives lost around Bakhmut, and for what?" Hodges said of Wagner's efforts.
The animosity between Prigohzin and Russia's military leaders, who do not directly command Wagner troops, has been growing for months, with Prigozhin sharing graphic videos of dead Wagner soldiers in Bakhmut while castigating Russia's military brass, alleging that they've been withholding necessary ammunition from his men.
Prigozhin has since denied the accusations, but Miles told Insider that the timing of the alleged offer makes sense with regard to his desperation for a win.
"Wagner being in a position to claim the lion's share of credit would have been a real coup for Prigozhin," he said. "And it would have been a blow to Shoigu and Gerasimov, who I think have been entirely happy to let Wagner grind itself down in Bakhmut to try to diminish the Prigozhin problem."
"All the stuff he says so publicly, my guess is that is mainly him wanting to create a narrative that it's not his fault they have failed in Bakhmut," Hodges said.
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