Moscow accuses mercenary of coup
Wagner leader cites attack
Russian generals late on Friday accused Yevgeny Prigozhin, the outspoken mercenary tycoon, of trying to mount a coup against President Vladimir Putin, as the Russian authorities opened an investigation into Prigozhin for “organizing an armed rebellion.”
The long-running feud between Prigozhin and the Russian military over the war in Ukraine has now escalated into an open confrontation, setting up the biggest challenge to Putin’s authority since he launched his invasion of Ukraine 16 months ago.
Videos circulating widely on social media showed that military and national guard armored vehicles had been deployed in Moscow and the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, near the front line in Ukraine where Prigozhin’s fighters had been operating.
Prigozhin on Friday accused the Russian military of attacking his Wagner forces and, in a series of recordings posted to social media, pledged that his fighters would retaliate. Russian authorities, in turn, accused Prigozhin — whose broadsides against the Russian Defense Ministry had been tolerated by Putin for months — of trying to foment a revolt.
“This is a stab in the back of the country and the president,” General Vladimir Alekseyev, the deputy head of Russia’s military intelligence agency, said in a video appeal to Prigozhin’s fighters, urging them to call off any rebellion. “This is a coup.”
Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary force has proved pivotal to the Russian war effort in Ukraine, but in recent months, he repeatedly chastised Russia’s top brass for alleged corruption and indifference to regular soldiers’ lives. On Friday night, he took his accusations to a new level, claiming that the Russian military had attacked Wagner encampments, killing “a huge number of fighters.”
“The evil borne by the country’s military leadership must be stopped,” Prigozhin said in one of a series of voice recordings posted to the Telegram social network after 9 p.m. Moscow time.
Minutes later, he suggested that Wagner force was prepared to go on the offensive against Russia’s Defense Ministry, saying, “There’s 25,000 of us, and we are going to figure out why chaos is happening in the country.”
He denied that the actions were a “military coup.”
“This is a march for justice,” he said in another audio message on Telegram. “Our actions aren’t interfering with the troops in any way.”
Just past midnight Moscow time, Russia’s prosecutor general announced that Prigozhin was being investigated “on suspicion of organizing an armed rebellion” and would face as much as 20 years in prison if prosecuted.
The Wagner leader then defiantly took to Telegram again, saying his fighters were approaching the city of Rostovon-Don and adding: “We are going farther. We will go to the end.”
Prigozhin’s whereabouts remained unclear, and there was no immediate confirmation that his forces were actually approaching the city.
While President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had yet to comment as of Friday night, one of his advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, warned on Twitter that “tumultuous times are coming” for Russia.
White House officials said they were following the events, but would not say much more. “We are monitoring the situation and will be consulting with allies and partners on these developments,” said Adam Hodge, a National Security Council spokesman.
For months the Russian war effort has been hampered by the bitter feud between Prigozhin and top military leaders, whom he has accused in scathing terms of incompetence in conducting the war. He has asserted that Russia’s top brass have refused to provide Wagner forces with needed ammunition even as they fought alongside the Russian military for control of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
But never before had Prigozhin accused Russia’s military leaders of attacking his forces, nor asserted in such stark terms that the Kremlin’s stated justification for the war was nonsense.