It has to count as one of the strangest PR campaigns in memory: using a pile of corpses to make your case to the powers that be.

That's what Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, appears to have done this week in an unusual public appeal for ammunition for his fighters in Ukraine. And in the process, he has cast a harsh light on his open feud with Russia's military leadership on the eve of the anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On Wednesday, Prigozhin posted a picture on Telegram showing the bodies of several dozen slain Wagner fighters, piled unceremoniously in a courtyard. Alongside that shocking photo, he posted the image of a formal request from Wagner for more ammunition, pointing the finger of blame squarely at the Russian Ministry of Defense for squandering one of those lives.

This is one of the gathering places of the dead," Prigozhin said. "These are the guys who died yesterday due to the so-called 'shell starvation' [by the Russian MOD]. There should have been five times fewer of them. So mothers, wives and children will get their bodies."

Apparently, the message got through to someone. In a message and voice note Thursday, Prigozhin said a shipment of ammunition was now on its way to his forces. 

"Today at 6 am (local) it was reported that shipment of ammunition begins," he said. "Most likely, the train has started moving ... we are told that the main papers have already been signed." 

What was the rationale behind this ghoulish

spectacle? Prigozhin already has a reputation for callousness and cruelty: Late last year, around the New Year's holiday, he visited a morgue stacked with the body bags of dead Wagner soldiers, many of whom had been recruited from prisons with a promise of amnesty. 

"Their contracts are over," he deadpanned. "They're going home."

But Prigozhin's latest stunt appeared to raise the ante in the oligarch's confrontation with Russia's defense establishment, and with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. 

Before Russia's February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin was a shadowy figure. While the activities of Wagner were well documented -- the mercenaries had appeared on battlefields in Syria and Libya as well as on training missions in the Central African Republic -- the Russian government more or less denied its existence