In this documentary photo taken from a video released by the Prigozhin Press Agency on Friday, March 3, 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the military company Wagner Group, talks with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked him to withdraw the remaining Ukrainian forces from Bakhmut to save them. live, at an unspecified location in Ukraine.
Prigozhin Press Service via AP
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Prigozhin Press Service via AP
In this documentary photo taken from a video released by the Prigozhin Press Agency on Friday, March 3, 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the military company Wagner Group, talks with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked him to withdraw the remaining Ukrainian forces from Bakhmut to save them. live, at an unspecified location in Ukraine.
Prigozhin Press Service via AP
The owner of the private military contractor Wagner issued the most direct challenge to the Kremlin on Friday, calling for an armed uprising aimed at toppling Russia’s defense minister. The security services responded immediately by calling for the arrest of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the opening of a criminal investigation.
In a sign of how seriously the Kremlin is taking the threat, security has been beefed up in Moscow and in Rostov-on-Don, which is home to the Russian military headquarters in the southern region and also oversees close to the war in Ukraine.
While the outcome of the confrontation remains unclear, it is likely to further hamper Moscow’s war effort as Kyiv’s forces are probing Russia’s defenses in the early stages of a counteroffensive. .
Prigozhin announced early Saturday that his forces had crossed Russia from Ukraine and had reached Rostov, saying they encountered no resistance from young conscripts at checkpoints and forces. His “doesn’t fight against children.”
“But we will destroy anyone who gets in our way,” he said in a series of angry videos and audio recordings posted on social media starting late Friday. “We are moving forward and will go to the end.”
He claimed that the Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, sent fighter jets to attack Wagner’s convoys that were running alongside conventional vehicles.
Despite Prigozhin’s claims that the Wagner convoy entered Rostov-on-Don, there has been no confirmation of that on Russian social networks. Videos show heavy trucks blocking the highway leading to the city, long National Guard convoys seen on a road outside Rostov-on-Don and armored vehicles running on the street.
Prigozhin said Wagner’s field camps in Ukraine were attacked with rockets, armed helicopters and artillery fire on orders of Gerasimov after a meeting with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, at which they decided to destroy Wagner.
Wagner forces played a key role in Russia’s war in Ukraine, successfully capturing the city where the bloodiest and longest battles took place, Bakhmut. But Prigozhin increasingly criticized the Russian military, accusing them of incompetence and lack of weapons and ammunition for his army.
Prigozhin said late Friday his army would punish Shoigu in an armed rebellion and urged the army not to resist. “This is not a military coup, but a march of justice,” Prigozhin declared.
The National Counterterrorism Board, a division of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, charged him with calling for an armed rebellion, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
The FSB called on Wagner’s contract soldiers to arrest Prigozhin and refuse to obey his “criminal and treacherous orders”. It called his statements “stabbing the Russian army in the back” and said they could spark an armed conflict in Russia.
President Vladimir Putin has been briefed on the situation and “all necessary measures have been taken”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Heavy military trucks and armored vehicles appeared in several areas of central Moscow early Saturday morning, and soldiers armed with assault rifles were deployed outside the main Defense Ministry building. The area of the presidential palace near Red Square was blocked off, and traffic was chaotic.
But even as the military strengthens its presence, downtown bars and restaurants are packed with customers. At a club near the FSB headquarters, people were dancing in the street near the entrance.
Prigozhin, who has a feud with the Ministry of Defense for many years, refused to comply with a requirement that military contractors sign contracts with the Ministry by July 1. In a statement late Friday, he said he was willing to find a compromise but “they have cunningly deceived us.”
“Today they carried out a missile attack on our rear camps, and a large number of our comrades were killed,” he said. The Department of Defense denies attacking the Wagner camps.
Prigozhin claims that Shoigu personally went to the Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don to direct the attack and then fled “cowardly”.
“This scum will be stopped,” he said of Shoigu.
“The evil shown by the military leadership of the country must be stopped,” he shouted, urging the military not to offer any resistance to Wagner as they acted to “restore justice.” .”
Colonel General Sergei Surovikin, deputy commander of the group of Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, called on Wagner forces to stop any action against the troops, saying it would fall into the hands of Russia’s enemies, who who is “waiting to see the aggravation of the political situation in our country.”
Tatiana Stanovaya, a political analyst, predicts this will be the end for Prigozhin.
“Now that the state is actively involved, there is no turning back,” she tweeted. “The end of Prigozhin and Wagner is imminent. The only possibility now is to be completely annihilated, with the level of resistance of Wagner’s group being the only variable. Surovikin is dispatched to persuade them to surrender. Confrontation seems completely futile.”
Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, a top military officer, denounced Prigozhin’s move as “madness” that threatened to spark a civil war.
“It’s a knife in the back of the country and the president,” he said. “It is impossible to imagine a more severe blow to the image of Russia and its armed forces. Such a provocation can only be orchestrated by Russia’s enemies.”
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the Ukrainian army was gathering troops to launch an attack around Bakhmut to take advantage of “Prigozhin’s provocation.” It said Russian artillery and warplanes fired on Ukrainian forces as they prepared to begin an offensive in the area.
In other developments in the Ukraine war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on other nations to heed warnings that Russia may be planning an attack on an occupied nuclear power plant to cause disaster. radiation.
Members of his government informed international representatives of the possible threat to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, whose six reactors have been shut down for months. Zelenskyy said he expected other countries to “give the appropriate signal and put pressure” on Moscow.
A Kremlin spokesman denied the threat to the plant came from Russian forces.
The possibility of life-threatening radiation has been a concern since Russian troops invaded Ukraine last year and seized the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. The head of the United Nations atomic energy agency has spent months trying to negotiate the establishment of a safety belt to protect the facility from repeated shelling of neighboring areas, but he unsuccessful.
The International Atomic Energy Agency noted on Thursday that “the military situation has become increasingly tense” while a Ukrainian counter-offensive is underway this month in Zaporizhzhia province, where it is located. factory of the same name and in a neighboring part of Donetsk Oblast.
Although the last of the plant’s six reactors was shut down last fall to reduce the risk of melting, experts have warned that radioactive releases could still occur. if the system that holds the reactor core and cools the spent nuclear fuel loses power or water.
During months of fighting, Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for which side has increased the threat to the plant.
Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of exploiting the plant’s cooling system, which was already threatened by a dam collapse that caused water in a reservoir used by the power plant to spill.
