Wagner Group chief says Russian Defence Ministry laid mines on Wagner Group fighters' exit routes from Bakhmut

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group private military company (PMC), has said that representatives of the Russian Ministry of Defence had laid mines on Wagner Group fighters’ exit routes from Bakhmut.

Source: Yevgeny Prigozhin’s press service

Quote from Prigozhin: "Just before exiting [Bakhmut] we detected suspicious activities along our exit routes. We called law enforcement agencies and found around a dozen locations with dozens of explosive devices: hundreds of anti-tank mines to tonnes of plastic explosives.

The command was responsible for all this. Investigations are currently underway.

Representatives of the [Russian] Defence Ministry were the ones to rig those areas with explosives. When asked why they did it, they pointed to their leadership.

There was no need to place those devices to hold enemy forces back, they were all behind the frontlines. We can therefore assume that those explosives were destined for the Wagner PMC."

Details: Prigozhin said none of his fighters were injured.

He claimed that this was the Russian leadership’s attempt to give him a public beating.

Background: In May, Prigozhin said that after 1 June, his mercenaries would not be present along the entire contact line in Ukraine for at least two months. The Institute for the Study of War believes that Wagner Group could miss the main stages of Ukraine's counteroffensive.

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