Putin condemns the “Road of Betrayal” as the mercenaries of the Wagner Group head towards Moscow

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner Corporation, a private mercenary force, is leading his skilled fighters towards Moscow while the Russian President Putin accused his one-time ally, who played a key role in the invasion of Ukraine, of an “armed uprising.”

As fast-moving events continue to unfold, Reuters reports that the Russian military fired on Wagner vehicles from the air on Saturday but “doesn’t appear to be capable of slowing their lightning-fast advance.” towards the Russian capital.

The New York Times verified a video posted on social media showing military vehicles “supposedly loyal to Wagner” plunging down a highway in Lipetsk province, about 250 miles south of Moscow. The governor of the province confirmed late Saturday morning that Wagner had entered the area.

The apparent rebellion by the Wagner Group represents a major domestic crisis and is arguably the most serious threat to Putin’s rule in his nearly quarter-century of rule.

On Saturday morning, Prigozhin announced that Wagner paramilitary forces had taken control of Rostov-on-Don, a Russian city of about a million people 680 miles south of Moscow, near the Ukrainian border. He claimed that his team had taken control of the Russian Armed Forces headquarters in the city, a key logistics and command center for the Russian war effort.

“We’re all ready to die,” Prigozhin said in an audio message Saturday claiming Wagner’s force was 25,000 men with another 25,000 ready to join, according to Bloomberg.

The uprising comes after Prigozhin on Friday accused the Russian military of killing “a large number” of his troops in an air strike, a charge the Russian Defense Ministry denies. Prigozhin posted a video from a Telegram channel linked to Wagner claiming to show the wreckage of a missile attack on Wagner camp and blaming the Ministry of Defense. On Friday, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a nonpartisan, Washington-based think tank, reported that the video “may have been produced for informational purposes”. It has not been independently verified.

Prigozhin also accused the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered to hide the bodies of 2,000 Wagner soldiers in a morgue in southern Russia.

Over the past few months, Prigozhin has escalated his criticisms of top Russian military officials, accusing them of keeping his group’s ammunition and other equipment and concealing the size of the overall loss. of the Russian military, but avoids directly criticizing Putin.

That all changed on Friday night, when Prighozin directly rejected Putin’s core justifications for the invasion of Ukraine. “There is no need for war to return Russian citizens to our hearts, nor to demilitarize or denuclearize Ukraine,” Prigozhin said in a video clip.

In an urgent speech on Saturday, Putin vowed to take “decisive actions” to quell the uprising. “Any internal mutiny is a mortal threat to our state…and our actions to defend the homeland from such a threat would be brutal,” he said. Putin says armed mutiny is treason.

Responding on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, Prighozin called Putin’s comments a “serious mistake”. “We are patriots of the Fatherland, we have fought and are fighting,” he said. On Friday, Prigozhin said his actions were “not a military coup” but “a march for justice.”

A senior US military official told NBC News that Prigozhin’s actions were not a coup attempt, but were intended to force Shoigu and the Chief of Staff to be removed from their posts. Valery Gerasimov, whom Prigozhin had long criticized. The ISW, echoing the official’s assessment of Prigozhin’s intentions, said the armed uprising was “not likely to succeed.”

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky reacted to the turmoil in Russia on social media. “Russia’s weakness is obvious. Total weakness, he tweeted. “And the longer Russia keeps its army and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain and problems it will have for itself later on.”

President Joe Biden said he discussed the ongoing situation with the French president Emmanuel MacronGerman Chancellor Olaf Scholzand British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.