Ukraine latest war news: Russia’s Wagner boss blames arms shortage on ‘treason’

The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner has warned that his forces who have captured the entire mining town of Bakhmut are being deprived of weapons and ammunition, adding that if they are forced to withdraw, the entire front won so far in the war will collapse.

“If Wagner withdraws from Bakhmut now, the whole front will collapse,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said over the weekend, speaking from a bunker-like space.

“The situation will not be sweet for all military formations protecting Russian interests,” he warned.

He added that his soldiers are worried that Moscow wanted to set them up as possible scapegoats if Russia were to lose the war.

“If we withdraw, we will go down in history forever as people who have taken the main step towards losing the war,” the mercenary group’s chief said in a nearly four-minute video.

“This is exactly the problem with ammo starvation.”

Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the situation in besieged Bakhmut with senior commanders, and two top generals supported continued defense of the eastern city against Russian forces, his office said.

Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, “spoke to continue the defensive operation and further strengthen (Ukrainian) positions in Bakhmut,” it said in a statement on its website.

The founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force Yevgeny Prigozhin claims his representative was denied access to the headquarters of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after Prigozhin complained about the lack of ammunition.

Prigozhin had previously said that his troops fighting to capture the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut were being deprived of ammunition and that if they were forced to retreat, the entire front would collapse.

Prigozhin said via his press service that he had written to the army’s top commanders saying that his men urgently needed ammunition.

“On March 6, at 8 o’clock in the morning, my representative at the headquarters had his passport canceled and was denied access to the group’s headquarters,” Prigozhin said.

“We continue to crush the Ukrainian army in Bakhmut,” he said.

Russia’s FSB security service said on Monday it had thwarted a Ukraine-backed car bomb attack against a prominent nationalist businessman who has been a cheerleader for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

The FSB, Russia’s top domestic intelligence agency, said it had intervened to stop the plot, which it said involved attaching a remote-controlled homemade bomb to the underside of a car used by Russian tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev.

In a statement, the FSB accused the Ukrainian security services of being behind the assassination attempt which it said had been organized on their behalf by Ukrainian Russian far-right activist Denis Kapustin.

It said a criminal case had been opened against Kapustin for alleged terrorist offenses and illegal trafficking of explosives.

The FSB said it had also thwarted an attempt by Kapustin to commit a sabotage attack on an oil and gas facility in Russia’s Volgograd region last year.

Malofeyev, the target of the alleged assassination plot, is a supporter of President Vladimir Putin who owns a conservative TV channel that promotes nationalist views and strongly supports Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Malofeyev said on his Telegram channel that he was fine and that no one had been injured in the attempt on his life, which he said would not change what he called his “patriotic position.”

“I have no personal hatred even for the people who want me dead,” he said.

“But as many of our saints have said, one must forgive one’s personal enemies and crush the enemies of the fatherland. So we will fight you until our victory. And nothing will stop us.”

The Ukrainian government named a new head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) during a live cabinet meeting on Monday, part of efforts to show its determination to crack down on graft.

The new NABU head was named Semen Kryvonos, who had served as head of the State Inspection of Architecture and Urban Planning. The European Union has made the fight against corruption a top priority for Ukraine as the country seeks membership.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut was of more symbolic than operational significance and would not necessarily mean Moscow had regained momentum in its year-long war effort.

“I think it’s more of a symbolic value than it is strategic and operational value,” Austin told reporters while visiting Jordan, adding that he would not predict if or when Bakhmut would be taken by Russian forces.

“Bakhmut’s fall will not necessarily mean that the Russians have turned the tide in this fight,” Austin added.

The Wagner mercenary group faces an “ammunition starvation” in the city of Bakhmut, which could lead to the collapse of the entire front Russia have caught from Ukrainesaid its manager.

This is the first sign that the Wagner group of forces on the Russian side is running out of ammunition after heavy fighting in Bakhmut, which Moscow is trying to capture, and indicates that the soldiers are facing difficulties.

Arpan Rai has the details:

Russian online bank Tinkoff has suspended interest payments due later this month on a dollar-denominated eurobond, days after being hit by Western sanctions, the lender’s eurobond issuer said.

Tinkoff, owned by TCS Group Holding, was part of the EU’s 10th sanctions package against Russia outlined last week following Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine. It has already been forced to suspend some trading in euros and had its app removed from the App Store.

The Eurobond issuer, TCS Finance DAS, which is also part of the TCS group, said it was notified on March 3 that Tinkoff had suspended the payment of interest, due on March 15, accrued on a $300 million perpetual bond.

The issuer said the March 15 rate would automatically be canceled as a result.

It added that debenture holders would be deemed to “irrevocably waive their right to receive and no longer have any rights against the issuer or any other party with respect to the payment of interest due March 2023”.