Prigozhin and the wagnerites (Photo:Press service of Concord/Handout via REUTERS)
The entire Russian front might collapse if the leader of Wagner mercenary company Yevgeny Prigozhin withdraws his fighters from the front-line town of Bakhmut, international observer Ivan Yakovyna has told NV Radio.
He noted that Prigozhin had threatened to withdraw his mercenaries on May 10 if he was not given shells.
Later, Prigozhin said his forces would be given ammunition. However, it is still not clear whether that ammunition will be delivered or if the Russian warlord will go ahead with his threat to withdraw from the ruins of the Donetsk Oblast town.
“In this (latter) case, the defeat of the Russian army will no longer be a distant prospect, but an immediate and close one,” Yakovyna predicted.
“The complete collapse, death and destruction of the Russian army will be a matter of a few months, if not even faster.
”Any hole that developed in the front line around Bakhmut, where the Russian offensive has been going for ten months already, would affect the whole front line, the journalist said.“The escape will be widespread, massive. Surrender, escape – whoever (can) will escape. If the dam bursts, the dam is finished. Even if the other parts of the dam are strong, if a small crack forms – that’s it, the dam is finished. It’s practically the same situation here.
”And even if the Russian mercenaries do get more shells, that would still not be a bad outcome for the Ukrainian army, either, Yakovyna said.
“There are objectively few shells. All the shells were fired and all the barrels (of artillery guns) have been worn out. And Russian industry is not Soviet industry. It cannot produce shells in the same quantities as before, it is simply (too) difficult for it to do so. It doesn’t have enough resources and people to do it.”
“There are, of course, some accumulated stockpiles, which are now being collected to protect against a future Ukrainian offensive. If all these stockpiles are now transferred to the Wagner PMC, the rest of the Russian army will simply have nothing to shoot back with when Ukraine advances. This will lead to a front breakthrough in many directions and, again, to defeat in the war.”
Prigozhin posted on May 4 a video with rows of corpses of his mercenaries. He said that they all were killed in a day near Bakhmut. In an expletive-laden rant, he scolded the leadership of the Russian army, Defense…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at The New Voice of Ukraine…