Ukraine war news – latest: Russia’s Wagner chief warns frontline ‘will collapse’ amid weapons shortage

Russian mercenary group Wagner’s chief has warned that his forces capturing the entire mining town of Bakhmut were being deprived of arms and ammunition, adding that if they were forced to retreat, the entire front gained in the war so far would collapse.

"If Wagner retreats 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 lost the war.

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

"This is exactly the problem with ammunition hunger."

Russian online bank Tinkoff has cancelled interest payments due later this month on a dollar-denominated Eurobond, days after being targeted with Western sanctions, the lender’s Eurobond issuer said.

Tinkoff, owned by TCS Group Holding, was included in the EU’s tenth package of sanctions 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 D.A.S, which is also part of the TCS group, said it was notified on March 3 that Tinkoff had cancelled the payment of interest, due on March 15, accrued on a $300 million perpetual bond.

The issuer said interest on March 15 would be automatically cancelled as a result.

It added that noteholders 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 payment of the March 2023 interest”.

Ukraine’s forces are likely conducting a “limited tactical withdrawal” in Bakhmut, although it is still too early to assess Kyiv’s intentions concerning a complete withdrawal from the city, according to a think tank.

In its latest update, the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Ukrainian troops “may be withdrawing from their positions on the eastern bank of the Bakhmutka River,” citing recent geolocated footage of the destruction of the railway bridge over the river on Friday.

“Russian war correspondents and milbloggers claimed that Russian forces captured eastern, northern, and southern parts of Bakhmut on 5 March and claimed to be reporting from positions in eastern Bakhmut, but ISW cannot independently verify these claims at this time,” the ISW update states.

It adds: “Geolocated footage showed that Wagner Group forces continued to make advances in northeastern Bakhmut and advanced near the Stupky railway station on 5 March.”

“A Ukrainian serviceman told a Ukrainian outlet that Russian forces have yet to cross the Bakhmutka River into central Bakhmut as of 4 March, and Russian milbloggers claimed that the Wagner Group pushed Ukrainian positions back to central Bakhmut.

“It is unclear if Ukrainian forces are planning to hold positions on the western bank of the Bakhmutka River.”

Russia is working on easing visa procedures for six countries, including India, Syria and Indonesia, the state TASS news agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Evgeny Ivanov as saying on Sunday.

“In addition to India (procedures simplification) ... is being worked out with Angola, Vietnam, Indonesia, Syria and Philippines,” Ivanov said.

Earlier, Ivanov said that Russia is also preparing intergovernmental agreements on visa-free trips with 11 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Barbados, Haiti, Zambia, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico and Trinidad, TASS reported.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu has visited Mariupol, the defence ministry said on Monday, the city in Ukraine‘s eastern Donetsk region captured by Russian forces last year after a months-long siege.

Mr Shoigu is on a rare visit to his forces in Ukraine, having awarded medals and meeting commanders on the weekend.

At least one person was wounded in the southern Russian region of Belgorod on Monday after Russian forces shot down three missiles, the governor of the region bordering Ukraine said.

The falling debris had also brought down some power lines near the town of Novy Oskol but the full scope of the damage was not immediately known, the governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on the Telegram messaging app.

“It’s known about one wounded, a man with shrapnel wounds to his hand,” Gladkov said.

He did not say who he thought had fired the missiles but in the past he has accused Ukrainian forces on the other side of the nearby border of similar attacks.

Belgorod borders Ukraine‘s Kharkiv region and has repeatedly come under fire since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia and on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed last week that Kyiv’s actions may point to a looming pullout from parts of the city of Bakhmut.

It said Ukrainian troops may “conduct a limited and controlled withdrawal from particularly difficult sections of eastern Bakhmut,” while seeking to inhibit Russian movement there and limit exit routes to the west.

Capturing Bakhmut would not only give Russian fighters a rare battlefield gain after months of setbacks but might rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and allow the Kremlin’s forces to press on toward other Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk province.

The Russian military has continued to respond to heavy armoured vehicle losses by deploying 60-year-old T-62 main battle tanks (MBT), according to the intelligence by the British defence ministry.

“There is a realistic possibility that even units of the 1st Guards Tank Army (1 GTA), supposedly Russia’s premier tank force, will be re-equipped with T-62s to make up for previous losses,” the ministry said in its latest intelligence update.

It added that 1 GTA had previously been due to receive the next-generation T-14 Armata MBT from 2021.

“In recent days, Russian BTR-50 armoured personnel carriers, first fielded in 1954, have also been identified [as] deployed in Ukraine for the first time,” the MoD said.

“Since summer 2022, approximately 800 T-62s have been taken from storage and some have received upgraded sighting systems which will highly likely improve their effectiveness at night,” the ministry said.

However, it added that, both these vintage vehicle types will present many vulnerabilities on the modern battlefield, including the absence of modern explosive reactive armour.