Does Bakhmut create a rift between Russia's army and Wagner mercenaries? | DW News

The leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has said his representative was denied access to the headquarters of Russia's military command in Ukraine. Prigozhin said the incident came a day after he had requested ammunition supplies to Russia's top commander in Ukraine. "On March 5, I wrote a letter to the commander of the [Special Military Operation] grouping about the urgent need to allocate ammunition," he said, using Moscow's official term for its invasion of Ukraine. "On March 6, at 8 a.m., my representative at the headquarters had his pass canceled and was denied access," he said.

The appeal from Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin came amid signs of a deepening rift between him and the defense ministry whom he has bitterly criticized for months and accused of deliberately starving his men of ammunition, an allegation it has rejected. Prigozhin's fighters - some of them convicts - have spearheaded the assault in eastern Ukraine for months, focusing their efforts on the small city of Bakhmut, which Russia calls Artyomovsk and sees as a useful stepping stone to seize bigger cities like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.