 Chief of Wagner, we should not be in Bakhmut any longer. Wagner group personnel will complete their pullout from Bakhmut by June the 5th, Russia's most powerful mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozin told a group of Russian military correspondents on June the 1st. On a video released by his press service, Prigozin, wearing military fatigues, is seen shaking hands and speaking to a group of his men, telling them, we should not be in Bakhmut any longer. In a separate video also released by the Wagner press service, Prigozin is seen speaking to a group of Russian reporters saying his Wagner group would fight on in Ukraine if his men got a separate section of the front without having to depend on clowns who ran swathes of the Russian armed forces. Celebrating his 62nd birthday on June the 1st at a training camp, Prigozin again confirmed that his men would finally leave the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on June the 5th after handing it to the Russian army. The Wagner mercenaries captured the devastated city in late May after months of grinding warfare. 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 Prigozin, known for his blunt, often expletive, laced commentary on the conduct of the war. 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. Prigozin said his men wanted to rest at camps in Russian controlled Ukraine for around a month and then things would become clearer. The rest-a-retur turned mercenary has gained widespread notoriety during the 15-month war in Ukraine and has regularly insulted President Vladimir Putin's top military brass, especially Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu and Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, over their performance. Neither Shoygu or Gerasimov have responded to his insults in public. Prigozin, who quipped last week that his nickname should be Putin's butcher, rather than Putin's chef, said he had asked prosecutors to investigate whether senior Russian defense officials had committed any crime before or during the war in Ukraine.