Wagner, a private Russian military company, posted a video on Telegram on Thursday night directly decried the Russian Defense Ministry’s claim that Russian regular military forces were involved in the attack on Soledar.
A day after the Russian Ministry of Defense reshuffled the command of the so-called “special military operations”, Wagner’s position doubled his boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s assertion that his forces alone were to blame. responsibility for the Soledar campaign, in direct conflict with the Ministry.
The video shows two men, face obscured, dressed in fatigues and standing in what looks like an underground bunker, illuminated by flashlights.
One man said: “We are officers of the Airborne Forces, we declare that the Airborne Forces were not involved in the attack on the city of Soledar. “The attack on the city of Soledar was carried out only by PMC Wagner’s forces. We weren’t even sent in that direction.”
CNN could not verify the identities of the men or the veracity of their claims, but it is important that Wagner posted it as competing claims about Russian forces responsible for the attack in the region. Eastern Ukraine has become a major point of contention in Russia’s power structure plot.
Some contexts: On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry said regular Russian forces were operating in and around Soledar, without mentioning Wagner.
“The paratroopers blocked Soledar from the north and south of the city,” The ministry said on its official Telegram channel. “Russian Aerospace Forces attack the enemy stronghold. Assault teams are fighting in the city.”
But Prigozhin called any claims that Russian forces other than Wagner were involved in the Soledar attack “fake information”.
“I would like to emphasize that Soledar has been exclusively owned by Wagner PMC units,” he said in a statement posted on Wagner’s Telegram channel on Monday.
The Ukrainian military confirmed on Thursday that the town was still disputed and that its forces were even “conducting counterattacks” in the settlement.
Some pro-Kremlin Russian military bloggers have speculated that the Russian Defense Ministry’s announcement on Wednesday of Valery Gerasimov as the commander of their “special military operation” was partly motivated by Wagner’s success. .
During a visit to his forces near Bakhmut on New Year’s Eve, Prigozhin directly criticized Kremlin officials.
“This year we will win! But first, we will defeat our bureaucracy and internal corruption,” Prigozhin told his fighters in a video posted to Telegram.
“Once we conquer bureaucracy and internal corruption, we will conquer the Ukrainians and NATO, then the whole world.”
“The problem now is that the officials and those involved in corruption won’t listen to us because they all drink champagne on New Year’s Eve.”
