Wagner chief rages at Russia's military failings from field of dead bodies

The leader of the Wagner mercenary group has brought escalating tensions with the Kremlin military leadership dramatically into the open after he recorded an expletive-ridden video while standing in a field littered with corpses in which he personally blamed Russia's top defence chiefs for losses suffered by his fighters.

- Pjotr Sauer

"These are Wagner lads who died today. The blood is still fresh," said Yevgeny Prigozhin in the extraordinary clip, pointing to roughly three dozen bodies that he says are those of the Wagner fighters. "They came here as volunteers and are dying so you can sit like fat cats in your luxury offices." 

In a separate message yesterday morning, Yevgeny Prigozhin said Wagner troops would leave the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut next week over what he said was the lack of ammunition for his troops.

In the two-minute first clip, Prigozhin, known as "Putin's chef" because his catering business hosted dinners attended by the Russian president, screams as he berates the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the Russian armed forces, Gen Valery Gerasimov over military supplies.

"Shoigu, Gerasimov, where the fuck is our ammunition?" he shouts, then continues to unleash personal insults directed at Shoigu, a longtime ally of Putin.

"You scum sit there in your expensive clubs. Your kids are all getting off on life, recording their little YouTube videos," Prigozhin says, referring to Shoigu's son-in-law Alexey Stolyarov, a popular fitness blogger.