The head of Vladimir Putin’s Wagner Group “private army” threatened on Friday to pull his troops out of the eastern town of Bakhmut after a ferocious bust-up with Russian army chiefs.

Yevgeny Prigozhin said his forces would on May 10 leave the Ukrainian town which has seen some of the fiercest fighting in Europe since the Second World War.

He made the announcement after unleashing a tirade against Russian army chiefs for not supplying his mercenary soldiers with enough munitions, displaying the bodies of several of them in a video to highlight how they are being slaughtered leading the fight for Bakhmut.

Prigozhin said: "I declare on behalf of the Wagner fighters, on behalf of the Wagner command, that on May 10, 2023, we are obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the defence ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds. 

"I’m pulling Wagner units out of Bakhmut because in the absence of ammunition they’re doomed to perish senselessly."

Wagner has been spearheading Russia’s attempt to capture Bakhmut since last summer, in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war in Ukraine.

Putin has made it a prized aim to seize the town.

But Ukrainian military chiefs surprised defence analysts by deciding to fight to hold onto the town, despite it having no strategic importance.

Keeping control of it has now, though, taken on symbolic importance.

It was not clear if Prigozhin will see through his withdrawal threat or whether he is just seeking to pile pressure on Russian army chiefs to give his forces more ammunition.

But his anger was clear in an expletive-filled video published early on Friday in which Prigozhin, surrounded by dozens of corpses he said were Wagner fighters, yelled and swore at Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

He said they were to blame for Wagner's losses because they had starved it of ammunition.

The clash between Putin’s military chiefs came as Ukraine is on the brink of launching a major counter-offensive to try to recapture land seized by Russia since the invasion in February 2022.

The White House estimates 20,000 Russian soldiers, including from the Wagner Group, have been killed since December as Putin and Prigozhin have thrown units into “meat grinder” battles, mainly to try to capture Bakhmut.

The West has supplied Ukraine with tanks, including British Challenger IIs, as well as long-range artillery for its counter-offensive.  By Nicholas Cecil, Evening Standard