Russia-Ukraine War

Russia-Ukraine War

Mercenary Leader is Accused by Russian Generals of Trying to Mount a Coup

The leader of a Russian mercenary group dismisses the invasion as a "racket" to enrich the ruling class.

Late on Friday, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the outspoken mercenary tycoon, was accused by Russian generals of trying to overthrow President Vladimir V. Putin. The Russian authorities have launched an investigation into Mr. Prigozhin for "organising an armed rebellion."

The long-running dispute over the war in Ukraine between Mr. Prigozhin and the Russian military has now turned into an open confrontation, posing Mr. Putin with the biggest challenge to his authority since he began invading Ukraine 16 months ago.

Videos that were widely shared on social media revealed that military and national guard armoured vehicles had been stationed in Moscow and Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia, close to the Ukrainian front line where Mr. Prigozhin's fighters had been engaged in combat.

On Friday, Mr. Prigozhin claimed that his Wagner mercenary forces were being attacked by the Russian military. He also promised that his fighters would retaliate in a series of recordings that were uploaded to social media. When Mr. Prigozhin's criticism of the Russian Defence Ministry was tolerated by Mr. Putin for months, Russian authorities accused him of attempting to incite a revolution.

In a video message to Mr. Prigozhin's fighters, Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev, the deputy head of Russia's military intelligence agency, pleaded with them to put an end to any uprising. It is a coup.

However, in recent months, he has repeatedly criticised Russia's top brass for alleged corruption and disregard for the lives of regular soldiers. Mr. Prigozhin's Wagner mercenary force has proven crucial to Russia's war effort in Ukraine. He increased the severity of his accusations on Friday night by asserting that the Russian military had attacked Wagner encampments and killed "a huge number of fighters."

In one of several voice recordings that were uploaded to the Telegram social network after 9 p.m. Moscow time, Mr. Prigozhin (pronounced pree-GOH-zhin) declared, "The evil borne by the country's military leadership must be stopped."

Later, he declared, "There are 25,000 of us, and we are going to figure out why chaos is happening in the country," implying that his Wagner mercenary force was ready to launch an attack against Russia's own Defence Ministry.

He rejected the idea that what had happened was a "military coup."

In a different Telegram audio message, he declared, "This is a march for justice." The troops aren't in any way harmed by our actions, we claim.

Russia's prosecutor general declared that Mr. Prigozhin was being looked into "on suspicion of organising an armed rebellion" and that he could spend up to 20 years in prison if found guilty just after midnight Moscow time.

When his fighters approached Rostov-on-Don, the Wagner leader defiantly declared on Telegram once more: "We are going farther. We're going all the way.

There was no immediate confirmation that Mr. Prigozhin's forces were actually moving towards the city, and it was unclear where he was.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, had not yet responded as of Friday night, but one of his advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, issued a dire warning on Twitter, saying that "tumultuous times are coming" for Russia.

While claiming to be monitoring the situation, White House officials remained relatively silent. Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said, "We are monitoring the situation and will be consulting with allies and partners on these developments.

After his online "troll factory" interfered in the 2016 American presidential election and after his Wagner fighters were deployed in Syria and other parts of Africa as a shadow force thought to be defending Kremlin interests, Mr. Prigozhin, a restaurant owner from St. Petersburg, gained international notoriety. He used his personal connections with Mr. Putin to secure lucrative government contracts.

The bitter conflict between Mr. Prigozhin and senior military figures, whom he has harshly accused of being incompetent in managing the war, has stymied the Russian military effort for months. He claims that despite fighting alongside the Russian military for control of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the top brass of Russia refused to supply Wagner forces with essential ammunition.

However, Mr. Prigozhin had never before accused the commanders of the Russian military of attacking his forces or stated in such strong terms that the Kremlin's justification for the war was illogical.

Mr. Prigozhin had called his country's invasion of Ukraine a "racket" carried out by a dishonest elite pursuing money and glory without regard for Russian lives in a 30-minute video that was made public on Friday.

Additionally, he charged Sergei K. Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, with planning a deadly attack with missiles and helicopters on his soldiers of fortune camped behind Russian lines in Ukraine. Additionally, he asserted that Mr. Shoigu personally oversaw the strikes from the southern Russian town of Rostov-on-Don, which is close to Ukraine.

It was not possible to immediately confirm the claims made by the mercenary leader. The Russian defence ministry rejected the claims, claiming that the messages Mr. Prigozhin had posted about alleged attacks on Wagner camps "do not correspond to reality."

According to the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin was "aware of all events around Prigozhin," according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

Russian pro-war activists are alarmed by Mr. Prigozhin's accusations because they believe an open battle between the army and Wagner forces could endanger the Russian front lines during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Some people in Ukraine saw his remarks as further proof of the conflicts within the Russian military campaign.

In a previously recorded speech, Mr. Prigozhin painted Mr. Putin as a leader who was being misled by his officials rather than directly criticising him. But Mr. Prigozhin went further than anyone in Russia's security establishment in openly questioning the wisdom of the war by rejecting the Kremlin's claim that the invasion was essential for the Russian people.

Mr. Prigozhin referred to Mr. Putin's initial justifications for the war, saying that neither the demilitarisation of Ukraine nor the denazification of Russia necessitated the war. "The war was necessary so that some animals could simply revel in their victory,"

The rants on Friday made Mr. Prigozhin's ambiguous position in Mr. Putin's system even more mysterious. After a protracted battle, Mr. Prigozhin's Wagner troops, which included seasoned warriors and thousands of prisoners he personally recruited from Russian jails, were crucial in capturing the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in May.

However, Mr. Prigozhin also became well-known as a populist politician during the battle for Bakhmut, railing against Russian military leadership corruption. Top military and Kremlin officials were painted as being unaware of and unconcerned about the struggles of regular Russian soldiers in his enraged recordings and videos posted to the Telegram messaging app.

Even though Mr. Putin's security forces have imprisoned or fined thousands of Russians for criticising the military or opposing the war, Mr. Putin has not yet restrained Mr. Prigozhin. Some people who are familiar with Mr. Putin have expressed the opinion that they think he still regards Mr. Prigozhin as a devoted servant exerting necessary pressure on a sizable military establishment. Others hypothesised that the Kremlin had planned Mr. Prigozhin's outbursts against Mr. Shoigu, the defence minister, in order to shift responsibility away from Mr. Putin.

However, Mr. Prigozhin's remarks on Friday complicated the situation by attacking not only Mr. Shoigu but also anonymous "oligarchs" close to Mr. Putin and debunking the entire official narrative surrounding the invasion. He disputed the Kremlin's claim that Ukraine was about to attack Russian-backed separatist territory in the east of the country by saying that there was "nothing out of the ordinary" in Ukraine's military posture on the eve of the February 2022 invasion.

He declared that "our holy war with those who insult the Russian people and with those who seek to degrade them has become a racket."

The counteroffensive by Ukraine to retake lost territory, according to Mr. Prigozhin's video, was going much worse for Russia than the administration was letting on. Igor Girkin, a former paramilitary commander who has frequently criticised Russia's top brass, was among the pro-war commentators on Telegram who swiftly refuted that assertion.