The mercenary leader Wagner warns that if his troops do not take Bakhmut and are forced to retreat, the entire Russian front threatens to collapse

The founder of the Russian mercenary group Wagner has warned that if his troops in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut do not receive more ammunition, the entire front will collapse.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose organization has played a major role in Russia’s military victories in recent months, said his ammunition-depleted troops were the “cement” holding the front line together and the last line of defense to win the war.

“Today, Wagner is the glue that, as I said before, holds the Ukrainian army in place – crushes it, destroys it and prevents it from moving to other regions and occupying other fronts.

“We are also moving forward and the [Russian] Army is forced to follow us to save face and strengthen their reputation… If the Wagner Group retreats, the following situation will occur.

“It is clear that the front will collapse, the front will collapse before the Russian borders, maybe it will collapse further.”

Yesterday, Ukrainian soldiers fired a self-propelled howitzer at Russian positions near Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

A Ukrainian soldier sits in a trench near Russian positions near Bakhmut yesterday

During the battles for Bakhmut, World War I trench warfare unfolded, with both sides firing artillery at each other while hiding in trenches.

Prigozhin made the comments in a four-minute video released over the weekend by a Telegram channel linked to Wagner.

Shocking footage shows how the Ukrainian city, once home to 10,000 people, has been turned into a dystopian wasteland by Vladimir Putin’s Russian forces – CLICK HERE to find out more

Earlier last week, he claimed his units had “virtually surrounded” Bakhmut – a focal point of the conflict in Donetsk, where fighting has intensified over the past week, with Russian forces attacking from almost all sides.

But yesterday he complained that most of the ammunition Moscow had promised its troops last month had yet to be delivered.

“At the moment we are trying to find out the reason: is it ordinary bureaucracy or treason?” asked Prigozhin on his usual press service Telegram channel.

The mercenary boss regularly criticizes Russia’s defense chiefs and top generals, and last month accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and others of “treason” for withholding ammunition supplies from his militias.

In his weekend video, Prigozhin said his troops fear Moscow may want to use them as a possible scapegoat if Russia loses the war.

“If Wagner retires from Bakhmut, that’s how history will remember us. A group of mercenaries led by Prigozhin convinced President Putin of their need… then they fell back, and the Ukrainian army broke into the territory of the Luhansk People’s Republic, wiped out Luhansk, wiped out Krasnodon and entered the territory of Russia.

“If we go back, we will forever go down in history as the people who took the most important step in losing the war. That’s exactly the problem we have right now: we’re starving for ammunition.

‘[My fighters] come to me and they say: “Chief, can someone in the depths of the Ministry of Defense or maybe even higher explain to the whole Russian people why we had so many problems?”

“What if they want to trick us and say we’re crooks and say that’s why we don’t get ammunition and guns?”

A Ukrainian soldier in a trench under Russian fire at the front line yesterday near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine

Ukrainian soldiers drive an infantry fighting vehicle on a road not far from Bakhmut

Ukrainian soldiers fire a self-propelled howitzer at Russian positions near Bakhmut

Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary army, speaks in Paraskoviivka, Ukraine, in this undated video released last week

Ukrainian soldiers light a fire with gunpowder near the town of Bakhmut

The Wagner group has been at the center of Russian military operations on the Ukrainian front for months, after launching a massive recruitment campaign in Russian prisons last year.

READ MORE: Bakhmut ‘almost destroyed like Mariupol’ as Russian troops surround Ukrainian city

The group employed human wave tactics, bringing in underarmed and poorly trained men to absorb Ukrainian resources before using better-armed and trained mercenaries to dismantle Ukraine’s weary fighters.

But since December’s demotion of Sergei Surovikin — an army general close to Prigozhin who previously commanded Russian forces — Wagner has been short of ammunition and support.

This has led to suspicions that Russian military commander Valery Gerasimov and Shoigu are isolating and condemning the mercenaries while covering up their own military’s bad performance.

It comes as an intelligence update from the British Ministry of Defense claims Russia is now deploying 60-year-old armored vehicles to the front lines despite heavy casualties.

“The Russian military has continued to respond to heavy armored vehicle casualties by deploying 60-year-old T-62 main battle tanks (MBT) … In recent days, Russian BTR-50 armored personnel carriers, first deployed in 1954, have also made their debut was in Ukraine,” the update reads.

It added that despite the upgrades, the vehicles are very outclassed and outclassed.

“As of the summer of 2022, approximately 800 T-62s have been brought out of storage and some have received improved sight systems that will most likely improve their effectiveness at night.

“However, both old vehicle types will have many weaknesses on the modern battlefield, including the lack of modern explosive reactive armor.”

A local resident walks past a damaged church and destroyed Russian tank in the city of Svyatohirsk, Donetsk region last week

A destroyed tank in the village of Tsupivka, Kharkiv region, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Elsewhere in Ukraine, the exiled mayor of Melitopol – a city in southern Zaporizhia province – claimed that a Ukrainian attack on some Russian military bases likely killed dozens of Putin’s troops.

Ivan Fedorov told Ukrainian TV yesterday that two powerful explosions were heard in the northern part of the city, one of the first in Ukraine, to be occupied when Russian forces launched their invasion in February last year.

“Powerful explosions were heard in occupied Melitopol, two enemy bases were destroyed,” Fedorov said.

According to the mayor, Russian victims of the strike “go to hundreds of people, but the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will provide more detailed information”.

“Today is a weekend of hell for them, just like the whole last week of hell,” Fedorov added.