Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin slams Russian army 'clowns'

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The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group said his soldiers would continue fighting in Ukraine only if they won't have to depend on the "clowns who turn people into meat."

Yevgeny Prigozhin, who celebrated his 62nd birthday at a training camp Thursday, also confirmed that his fighters would finally withdraw from the decimated city of Bakhmut on June 5 after handing control of it to the regular forces.

The Wagner Group captured the city in eastern Ukraine after nine months of bloody battles that have been likened to a "meat grinder."

"If the whole chain [of command] is 100% failed and will only be led by clowns who turn people into meat, then we will not participate in it," said Prigozhin, who has been increasingly vocal in his criticism of top military brass.

"Beautiful isn't it?" he said to Russian reporters with a smile, gazing at a night sky lit up with blasts and red flares against bursts of automatic gunfire from his mercenaries.

Prigozhin said his men wanted to rest at camps in Russian-occupied Ukraine for around a month and then things would become clearer.

"It has been a tough year. Then we’ll see how it goes," he said.

The 15-month war has dramatically thinned the ranks of Wagner's fighters — many of them recruited from Russia's prisons — with Prigozhin admitting last month that 20,000 men had been killed in the battles for Bakhmut.

Prigozhin, a catering mogul and Wagner Group founder, has regularly — and publicly — lashed out at Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, unleashing foul-mouthed rants accusing them of denying his men sufficient ammunition.

On Wednesday, Prigozhin went a step further by asking prosecutors to investigate whether senior Russian defense officials had committed any "crime" before or during the war in Ukraine.

With Post wires