Ukraine War – The Prigozhin Saga: All Is Fine Now?

by SIMPLICIUS THE THINKER

The Prigozhin saga has appeared to have concluded in the expected and predictable manner. Prigozhin now claims all is fine, and that a new deal has been struck with the Russian MOD to deliver all appropriate ammo, plus securing of the Wagner flanks. This was after Chechen leader Kadyrov claimed to have already been sending his men to take over Bakhmut from Wagner.

 
Prigozhin claims that previous theater commander Surovikin has now been appointed as some sort of special liaison to Wagner in terms of logistics and supply.

I’d go deeper into this entire situation, unpacking what it could mean, and what it was all about, but to be quite frank, I think most of us agree that this entire saga was quite tedious and tiresome, and is ultimately a circular argument of who was to blame, whether it was all just theater, etc. If it’s truly resolved then I think for now we can move on and not need to devote massive page space to this anymore. The only people doing so so are likely just trying to profit from the sensationalist clickbait circumstances surrounding this strange episode. I’ll return to it if it flares up again, but for now it appears not much is left to be said on it other than, as someone recently aptly flourished: “The dogs bark, but the caravan rolls on.”

Only thing I’ll say is that numerous sources from the AFU continue to maintain that the Wagner saga was an illusion, and that no ammunition depletion is recorded. For instance, in a new CNN article, spokesman for AFU’s eastern grouping, Serhii Cherevatyi, said:

“Now they are firing more than 20,000 shells a day. That’s why (Prigozhin’s remarks on ammunition starvation) is a complete bluff,” he said.

 
Another report where Ukrainian sources state that new Wagner units with additional equipment and ammo are “constantly arriving” for a final strike on AFU positions, and that this does not match what Wagner has been saying:

 
And a Ukrainian site claims that Ukrainian intelligence reported Wagner was not withdrawing anywhere, even days before it was magically ‘resolved’.

 
Ukraine’s GUR representative stated:

“Prigozhin is not going to withdraw Wagner mercenaries from Bakhmut. He made these statements because he cannot fulfill another promise – to capture Bakhmut by May 9. Therefore, he is now trying to make someone guilty of this, because he understands that he can no longer keep his word,” explained the representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry (GUR MO) Andriy Chernyak in a commentary to the news agency RBC-Ukraine.

Funnily enough, in the same report, Ukrainian GUR appears to confirm some of the theories from the Russian side, which is that Wagner is not ‘low on shells’ per se, but rather that Wagner is greedy for an endless increase of them, which no amount will satiate:

Chernyak stressed that at present the Main Intelligence Directorate does not observe any withdrawals of troops in the Bakhmut area.

However, the Wagner mercenaries do have some problems with the ammunition supply, Chernyak notes.

“But no matter how much ammunition they get, it will not be enough for them. That is, the more they are given, the more they need and the more they want to get,” he explained.

Even Strelkov was dubious about the Prigozhin saga and posted a message from one of his close frontline friends, who said Prigozhin’s antics were fakery:

Strelkov: Just in case – the man is well known to me (a ’14 volunteer), completely unselfish (and, by the way, quite independent of me), and is now at the front.

__________________

I think the “turmoil” in the interwebs about the “scandalous statement” by Cook [ed: they call Prigozhin “cook” disparagingly] should be stopped!

I argue :

1. Repeated display of the corpses of his soldiers can do only a fuckhead who has lost all sense of boundaries!

2. The court fucker can’t “just lose his edge”! Because this happens only “by the highest permission”, otherwise the fucker would be nullified “once / twice”, as once not too long ago, nullified the same “Wagner” commanders of Novorossiya! [ed: What he’s saying here is that there’s no way Prigozhin would be able to do any of what he claims without full permission from the highest echelons of the MOD]

3. “Shells” have absolutely nothing to do with it! Everyone else is given much less shells!

4. The disposal of their personnel in the “Wagner” is more successful than anywhere else at the front, and the shrieks of the exalted public about “the most combat-ready unit” end exactly at the moment when their relative is “put on the meat”!

5. Unimaginable for Putinia, public behavior like that of the “cook” is only possible, again, only “with the highest permission”! [ed: Once again, he re-iterates that Prigozhin’s statements and decisions can only happen with highest permission]

6. There are no “mobsters caught on the street” in “Wagner”! All of them are volunteers there, and not like they were in Donbass in ’14, but exclusively “for money”! And the “compensation” to relatives for the death of their loved one is much less than the “compensation” for this “most effective” military unit!

…Hence, one can draw conclusions “about the poor “cook” and his “disinterestedness” in “historic” assault of a town 10 km in diameter during eight months…!

Anyway, enough of the Kremlin bullshit!)

As can be seen, this Strelkov disciple who is a soldier allegedly at the frontline, firmly believes this was a ‘Kremlin performance’. Interestingly, to those who still believe Prigozhin can act independently, one thing his performance revealed was that he does in fact require permission from the Kremlin, since he ended up posting a letter “requesting permission” from the MOD to pull Wagner out of Bakhmut, prior to finally resolving the issue today.

The below is for curiosity purposes, posted by Prigozhin yesterday, addressed to Shoigu, asking for “permission”: “I ask you to issue a combat order on the transfer of the positions of Wagner…” etc. As you can see, even as fuming mad as he ostensibly was, he still had to request permission from Shoigu to do anything, at least as part of the ‘performance’.

 
One other key revelation from the episode, however, was Prigozhin’s reiteration that Ukraine is losing 400-600 men in Bakhmut per day, which should silence the doubters who claimed these events mean that Russia is now suffering a lopsided loss ratio against Ukraine.

 
This was from Prigozhin’s new video which can be seen here: VIDEO LINK.

Another statement from a Ukrainian source:

All Prigozhin’s statements about “exiting Bakhmut” are all fakes and lies, and “these will be difficult days of missile attacks, attacks by Shaheds,” because “Russia wants to stage a bloody show in Ukraine.”

And lastly, for anyone that’s interested, prior to the resolution, Prigozhin had released a pretty exhaustive document which clarified all the issues with a lot of interesting details, which can be read in full here (just run it through an auto-translator): LINK.

The document has some very interesting observations from a tactical standpoint as Prigozhin goes into battle details. He confirms, for instance, that there are 30k Wagnerians against 35k AFU directly in Bakhmut and 80k+ total in general area near Bakhmut. He also states that Wagner consumes on average 6000 shells per day.

Using these numbers, he makes some interesting accounts by way of Soviet artillery theory, such as the following:

– Second: according to the norms defined by the Rules of Shooting and Fire Control, the consumption of ammunition for suppressing the enemy’s platoon strongpoint is 180 shells per 1 hectare. The average length of the front of the Wagner PMC, taking into account different periods, is 80 km. This is about 400 enemy strongholds. Their suppression requires 180 x 400, that is, 72 thousand shells per day. And so on every day.

He also states the following:

31. To maintain combat capability during a full-scale war, losses (“200th” and “300th”) of 10-12% in 25 days (the duration of a conditional military operation) are considered acceptable.

The arithmetic is very simple:

— If you give 18 thousand shells a day, the loss is 10%;

— If they give 6 thousand shells a day, the loss is 24%;

— If you give 2 thousand shells a day, the loss is 35% or higher.

No one counts 10% of ammunition from the norm. In this case, the unit is doomed to death. Now we get 10%.

Lastly and most interestingly, Prigozhin states something which appears to answer a question I had last time, in that he believes that Russia currently produces enough shells to fully arm everyone as needed, and as such the ‘shell hunger’ induced is ‘artificial’:

38. The Russian military industry has reached the level of projectile production sufficient to fully support about 5 such combat-ready formations as the Wagner PMC, with a front length of 120-150 km and a simultaneous offensive along all sectors of the front.

39. The volume of weapons and ammunition stocks allows us to provide for everyone, including in standard quantities.

This is an interesting admission, seeing as how he states that Wagner fires 6000 shells per day. So if he’s saying that Russia’s current production is already at a level of being able to support five such Wagner groups simultaneously, this appears to imply that, in his opinion, Russia is currently manufacturing upwards of 6k x 5 = 30,000 shells per day, which would be 900,000 per month, and 10.8 million per year. This is a little hard to believe, although my previous estimates given in a past report were that Russia currently produces maybe in the 300-400k per month range at the most, with long term ramp ups ongoing and that they would eventually be able to possibly hit 7+ million per year, which is ~600k per month, and 20k per day.

Prigozhin appears to believe they’re way ahead of schedule with that, at least insofar as I understand his implications.

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