Wagner leader: Mercenary group lacks ammo, leaving Bakhmut, Ukraine

May 5 (UPI) -- Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian Wagner mercenary group, said he plans to pull his troops out of the battle for Bakhmut, Ukraine by Wednesday.

Prigozhin shared a video to his Telegram channel in which he, surrounded by what he said were dead bodies of Wagner fighters, said the group lacked ammunition and needed to retreat from the eastern Ukrainian city to "lick our wounds."

"Because of the lack of ammunition, our losses are increasing exponentially every day," he said. "My lads will not suffer useless and unjustified losses in Bakhmut without ammunition."

In March, Prigozhin said his mercenaries were forced to retreat from Bakhmut due to a lack of ammunition and that he had been denied access to the group's headquarters.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had seen reports of Prigozhin's comments on Wagner's withdrawal "in the media," but could not comment "as it concerns the special military operation."

U.S. estimates on Russian casualties released this week suggested more than 20,000 Russian soldiers had died since December, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby saying nearly half of those included Wagner mercenaries.

Russia, however, has disputed the figures, with Peskov saying, "Washington simply does not have the possibility to name any correct figures."

Russia has been pouring troops into battle in the Bakhmut area for months in an attempt to take the city. U.S. leadership, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, has downplayed the importance of Bakhmut as "more of a symbolic value than it is strategic and operational value."

Prigozhin said Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, a Russian army general known as the butcher of Mariupol, has joined Wagner.

Russian blogger Alexander Simonov posted videos to Telegram showing Mizintsev wearing a Wagner uniform after the Russian Ministry of Defense announced it had replaced him as deputy defense minister for logistics.

In January, Kirby said the U.S. Treasury Department would sanction Wagner and designate it as a "transnational criminal organization."