As the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Prigozhin repeatedly lashed out at the top Russian army. But with a video he gets himself into trouble for the first time. Did he insult President Putin?
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of his military company Wagner, has been making headlines for weeks: With “volunteers”, some recruited in Russian prisons, he fights alongside the Russian army in Bakhmut, Ukraine – and increasingly openly shares videos against the Russian army leadership.
In his most recent video, Prigozhin went one step further and had to explain himself:
Today one of the Defense Ministry units fled from one of our flanks, abandoned its positions. Everyone fled, exposing the front almost two kilometers wide and 500 meters deep.
Verbal attacks on Shoigu and Gerasimov
What Prigozhin reported from the front at Bakhmut could easily bring him a charge of discrediting the army and many years in a camp in today’s Russia.
Only the 61-year-old head of the Wagner military company is considered a Putin confidant. Apparently with impunity, he repeatedly denounced the incompetence of the Russian army leadership – especially Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his chief of staff Valery Gerasimov.
A week ago he had himself filmed in front of a mountain of killed Wagner fighters. Their blood was still fresh, Prigozhin claimed, and then scolded him so rudely that his own press service edited the soundtrack.” Now listen to me: We’re 70 percent short of ammunition. Gerasimov, Shoigu, bring the ammunition!” demanded the Wagner Boss.
The mercenary group had to complain about unnecessarily high numbers of victims. However, the exact number is secret.
“What if the lucky grandpa is an asshole?”
Last week, Prigozhin issued an ultimatum: the Wagner troops were to withdraw from Bakhmut on May 10. Which he withdrew when his threat was followed by the Department of Defense’s guarantee that it would now fully deliver. But Prigozhin was still unsatisfied. In a detailed video, he now seemed to attack President Vladimir Putin directly.
“The industry produces ammunition, but instead of handing it over to the troops, it is collected in some warehouse. What for?” asked the Wagner boss. Nobody knows that.
Instead of spending grenades to kill the enemy and save our soldier’s life, they kill our soldiers and happy grandpa thinks he’s fine.
“If it turns out that he’s right, God bless us,” the Putin confidant continues.
But what should the country do, our children, grandchildren. And how are you supposed to win the war if it happens to turn out – just a guess – that this grandpa is a complete asshole?
France wants to put Wagner on the EU terror list
Almost a day of speculation and inquiries passed. Although the brutally acting head of the private military company is apparently of great use in the war against Ukraine, he would have gone too far with this personal attack or perhaps with the demonstration of his own political ambitions.
Prigozhin denied today. “I spoke about Grandpa in connection with the fact that we are not given ammunition and they leave it in warehouses,” he said. “Who can the grandfather be? Possibility one: Mizintsev, who was fired for giving us grenades and can’t do that anymore. Or Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, who was supposed to give us ammunition, but we don’t receive it.”
Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev was dismissed as deputy defense minister in April. He is said to have been immediately hired by Prigozhin as deputy commander of the Wagner troops.
Far more important today than the “grandfather question” were these reports on Prigozhin’s military companies: Great Britain wants to formally classify Wagner as a terrorist organization and the French parliament is demanding that Wagner be put on the EU’s list of terrorists.