(Moscow) The leader of the paramilitary group Wagner Yevgeny Prigojine said on Saturday that he entered Russia with his troops with the aim of overthrowing the military command, saying he was “ready to die” with his 25,000 men to “liberate the Russian people”.
The Russian public prosecutor’s office has announced the opening of an investigation for “armed mutiny” against Mr. Prigojine, who went into rebellion after accusing the Russian regular army of having bombarded his men, and the authorities have reinforced security measures in Moscow and several other regions of Russia.
“We continue, we will go to the end”, launched Evguéni Prigojine in an audio message on Telegram. “We will destroy everything that gets in our way,” he threatened.
“We are all ready to die, all 25,000. And after that, there will be another 25,000. Because we die for the fatherland, we die for the Russian people who must be liberated from those who bombard the civilian population “, he hammered afterwards.
He announced that his forces, so far deployed in Ukraine, had crossed the Russian border and entered the city of Rostov (south). He also assured that his troops had shot down a Russian helicopter which had “opened fire on a civilian column”.
He did not provide any proof of these assertions, the veracity of which AFP was unable to confirm.
In Moscow, security measures have been “reinforced” around sensitive sites, according to the TASS agency.
Images on social media and online media, the authenticity of which AFP could not confirm, showed military vehicles circulating in the city, near the Ministry of Defense, and in position in front of the chamber lower part of Parliament, the Duma, a few dozen meters from the Kremlin.
The governor of the Rostov region called on the population to “stay at home”, and that of Lipetsk, 420 km south of Moscow, also announced “reinforced security measures”.
Investigation for mutiny
Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov informed President Vladimir Putin “of the opening of a criminal investigation in connection with the attempt to organize an armed mutiny”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
In multiple audio messages throughout the day, Wagner’s boss previously claimed that Russian strikes had caused a “very large number of casualties” in his ranks.
“They carried out strikes, missile strikes, on our rear camps. A very large number of our fighters have been killed,” he said, accusing Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of ordering the attacks.
These accusations “do not correspond to reality and are a provocation”, retorted the Ministry of Defense in a press release.
An influential Russian general, Sergei Surovikin, called on Wagner’s fighters to return to their barracks. ” I am asking you to stop […] Before it is too late, we must obey the will and the order of the President-designate of Russia,” he said in a video on Telegram.
The FSB (security forces) called on Wagner’s fighters to arrest their leader.
This open war exposes the tensions within the Russian forces engaged in the Ukrainian conflict.
“Those who have military responsibility for the country must be stopped,” also said the boss of Wagner, calling on the Russians not to oppose resistance to his troops, or even to join them.
“Power and Money”
Rival Russian factions began to “devour each other for power and money,” said Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov. In Washington, the White House said it was monitoring the situation closely.
On Friday, Yevgeny Prigojine said that the Russian army was retreating in the areas of Zaporijjia and Kherson (south) as well as in Bakhmout, a city in the east that the Russians claim to have captured but where the Ukrainians say they have advanced on the flanks these last weeks.
“There are no military successes” from Moscow, Mr. Prigojine again slammed, affirming that the Russian military “wash themselves with their blood”, a way of asserting that they suffer heavy losses.
Unverifiable from an independent source, the words of Wagner’s boss in any case contradict those of Vladimir Putin and Sergei Shoigu, according to whom the Russian army “repels” all Ukrainian attacks.
The Russian Ministry of Defense, however, warned that Ukraine is preparing to attack from the side of Bakhmout by “taking advantage of Prigozhin’s provocation to destabilize the situation”.
In recent days, Mr. Putin has repeated that the Ukrainian counter-offensive was a failure and that the Kyiv forces had suffered near “catastrophic” losses.
Mr. Prigojine described these victorious declarations as “deep deception”.
While many opponents and anonymous Russians are in prison for criticizing the conflict in Ukraine, the leader of Wagner has openly questioned the reasons for which the military intervention was launched.
“The war was necessary for a group of bastards to be promoted”, he castigated, also accusing “the Russian oligarchs” who “needed the war”, while Kyiv was according to him “ready to not any deal.”
In Ukraine, Russia launched a new salvo of missiles overnight from Friday to Saturday against several cities. In Dnipro (center), several houses have been completely destroyed and “there are victims,” Mayor Borys Filatov said on Telegram.
The head of the Ukrainian capital’s military administration, Sergey Popko, said that the anti-aircraft defense had destroyed “more than 20 missiles in the airspace around Kyiv”.