Yevgeny Prigozhin: Wagner members ‘ready to die’ as chief calls out Russian military leaders
Vladimir Putin has warned of the danger of a civil war and has said the “betrayal” of the Wagner group will result in “inevitable punishment”.
The head of the mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has mounted a direct challenge to military chiefs in Moscow by ordering his fighters to seize army bases at a major city near the border with Ukraine.
In a televised announcement this morning, standing in front of the Russian flag, Putin called Wagner’s actions “a stab in the back”.
“All those who deliberately embarked on the path of betrayal, who prepared an armed rebellion, embarked on the path of blackmail and terrorist methods, will suffer inevitable punishment. They will answer both before the law and before our people,” Putin said. He did not mention Yevgeny Prigozhin by name.
Prigozhin[1] said today that his forces had taken control of all military sites in Rostov-on-Don as he vowed “revenge” on defence chiefs in Moscow that he said were responsible for a strike against his forces in eastern Ukraine.
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Images suggested that Wagner fighters had taken control of central streets in Rostov-on-Don, which has a population of around one million people. Rostov-on-Don is around 60 miles from Ukraine and 600 miles south of Moscow.
In a extraordinary scenes inside Rostov-on-Don’s Southern Military District headquarters, Prigozhin told Yunus-bek Yevkurov, the deputy defence minister, that his fighters would march on Moscow unless Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, were handed over to Wagner.
“Until that [happens] we will be here, we will block the city of Rostov and we will head to Moscow,” he said, according to video footage that was posted to social media. He also said later that his troops had seized the city’s airport. He insisted that Wagner’s actions would not stop Russian troops from fighting in Ukraine.
“There were explosions overnight, the city is closed off, hell knows what is going on,” a local resident told The Times. He said a helicopter had been shot down near his home on the outskirts of the city. “Is this a civil war or what?”
A Russian security source told Reuters that Wagner fighters also controlled key military facilities in Voronezh, another major city close to Ukraine about 300 miles south of Moscow.
Wagner fighters near the headquarters of the Southern Military District in the city of Rostov
REUTERS
Around 200 soldiers have reportedly surrendered to Wagner fighters in the Voronezh region, according to images on Telegram. Aleksandr Gusev, the governor, confirmed that fighting was taking place. This came after another group of Russian soldiers who said they were based in Ukraine pledged to support Prigozhin. “We back you totally. If you need us, just whistle and we’ll be there,” said one fighter, his face unmasked. Another soldier added that it was time to kick out the “louses” in Moscow.
There were reports of heavy fighting on the outskirts of Voronezh. In video posted to Telegram, the sounds of automatic gunfire and loud explosions could be heard and and smoke could be seen billowing into the sky in a field. “Has war started?” a man asked, before shooting grew louder and closer.” It was impossible to verify the footage.
Military bloggers said Russian warplanes had carried out strikes on Wagner fighters on the M4 motorway that leads from southern Russian to Moscow.
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Putin briefed the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on the situation in Russia, according to a message posted on the Belarusian presidency’s official Telegram channel.
An armed rebellion led by the Wagner mercenary group marks “the most significant challenge to the Russian state” in recent times, according to UK defence officials. The Ministry of Defence said in its latest intelligence briefing that the loyalty of Russia’s security forces will be “key to how the crisis plays out”.
The MoD said Wagner units are “ almost certainly aiming to get to Moscow”. It said there is “limited evidence of fighting” between the forces and that some Russian security forces “have likely remained passive, acquiescing to Wagner”.
“Putin has declared war on the Frankenstein monster he created himself,” wrote Farida Rustamova, a Russian opposition journalist. “Just a year ago, Putin himself presented [Prigozhin] with the Hero of Russia award.”
Russia opened a criminal investigation into the maverick leader of the Wagner mercenary group after he alleged the Russian army killed an “enormous number” of his fighters in rocket strikes on their rear bases in Ukraine.
Prigozhin said the members of his force were “ready to die” as he vowed to topple Russia’s military leadership.
“All of us are ready to die. All 25,000, and then another 25,000,” he said in a the latest in a string of audio messages. “We are dying for the Russian people.”
Prigozhin says Wagner have taken control of Russian army command centre in Rostov
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This morning, Prigozhin announced on Telegram that he is inside the army headquarters in the Russian city of Rostov and that his fighters control the city’s military sites, including an aerodrome.
Prigozhin claimed that his private army forces had crossed from Ukraine into Rostov, facing no resistance, in a series of extraordinary audio recordings published by his press service.
“If anyone stands in our way we will destroy everything put in our path. We are holding out a hand to everyone, don’t spit on that hand. We’re going further; we’re going to the end,” he said.
Wagner fighters atop of a tank in a street near the headquarters of the Southern Military District in the city of Rostov
REUTERS
Sergei Surovikin addresses the Wagner leadership, commanders and soldiers
RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY/GETTY IMAGES
“Anyone who puts up resistance — we will consider this is a threat and destroy immediately. Including any roadblocks on our way,” he added
The businessman[2], 62, directly accused the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, of approving the strikes, saying that he had “put up helicopters to destroy our boys and then carried out rocket strikes”. “The scumbag will be stopped,” he said, adding: “We are 25,000 and we are going forward to get to the bottom of why this lawlessness is happening in the country. All those who want to, join us. We have to end this outrage . . . This is not a coup. It’s a march for justice.”
General Sergei Surovikin, deputy commander of Russia’s Ukraine campaign, told Wagner fighters to obey Putin, accept Moscow’s commands and return to their bases. He said political deterioration would play into the hands of Russia’s enemies.
“I urge you to stop,” Surovikin said in a video posted on Telegram, his right hand resting on a rifle. “While it’s not too late, you need to obey the will and order of the elected president of Russia. Stop the columns, return them to their permanent bases. We must resolve all problems peacefully.”
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In another of his recordings, Prigozhin said his forces were advancing into the garrison city of Rostov.
“The border guards came out to meet and embrace our fighters. Detachments of the ministry of defence, more accurately – conscripts, that jumped in to block our path, moved to one side. We don’t fight with children. It’s Shoigu who kills children, throwing untrained soldiers, including conscripts, into war. He put 18-year-olds up against us, they’re good to be our children and grandchildren. So these lads will live and go back to their mothers.
“We fight only against professionals [professional soldiers],” he added.
A woman walks past Wagner fighters in a street near the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov
REUTERS
In another message Prigozhin said that his forces had shot down a Russian military helicopter. “A helicopter has just now opened fire at a civilian column. It has been shot down by units of… Wagner,” he said.
The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, said this morning on social media that “anti-terror” measures had been implemented in the Russian capital.
At the same time, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an anti-Kremlin figure and former oil tycoon, urged Russians to support the Wagner group.
“We need to help now, and then, if necessary, we will fight this one, too,” he said. He added that it was important to back “even the devil” if he decided to take on the Kremlin. “And yes, this is just the beginning.”
Russian officials in Rostov urged residents to stay at home. “Law enforcement agencies are doing everything necessary to ensure the safety of residents,” Rostov’s governor’s Vasily Golubev said on social media. “I ask everyone to stay calm,” he said.
In Russia’s southern Voronezh region residents were told to avoid the main north-south motorway connecting Moscow to southern regions because a military convoy was on the move there.
A police car is parked behind a barrier in Red Square on Saturday
EVGENIA NOVOZHENINA/REUTERS
The government said on its Telegram channel that the situation was under control and that measures were being taken to ensure public safety.
“A decision has been taken to reinforce security measures in the region,” said Igor Artamonov, governor of Lipetsk, a region 250 miles south of Moscow. “I ask everyone to remain calm.”
In Moscow, an armoured personnel carrier and a military truck were seen on video taking positions near the State Duma. There were also reports of checkpoints being set up on the Don motorway, which links Moscow to Rostov, not far from Ukraine. Officers of the Moscow division of the FSB were said to have been put on alert.
Russian state television interrupted normal programming to inform viewers that a video said to be of the aftermath of a missile strike on a Wagner base was a fake.
“Security measures have been strengthened in Moscow; important sites have been taken under increased protection, as have the organs of state power and centres of transport infrastructure,” a law enforcement source told the Tass state news agency.
Washington has been aware of growing tensions between the Wagner Group and the Russian ministry of defence since at least the start of the year.
In late January, the White House designated the mercenary group as a “transnational criminal organisation”[3].
Mark Hertling, a retired US army lieutenant general, told CNN: “What’s fascinating is that [the Wagner forces apparently marching towards the Russian border] are coming off the front lines of the Donbas and the southern areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
“What is more important is the number of Russian generals who have been on Telegram channels talking about [it], and telling the Wagner group soldiers to put down their weapons and get back to the front — they are at the zero line as Russia likes to call their final defences — and prepare to defend against the Ukrainian attacks.
“It all comes at a very fascinating time when Ukrainian forces are just beginning to gain momentum in their offensive operations in the same locations where Russian troops are needed. This whole Prigozhin action tonight, and the reaction by the Russian generals, is probably causing huge moral problems within the Russian senior military hierarchy while also confusing the bejesus out of the Russian soldiers on the front lines.
“It could not have happened at a more inopportune time for Russia, but a very opportune time for Ukraine.”
”If there are Russian military and security vehicles [are] starting to lager [a military term for preparing equipment for action] in Red Square at 0330 hrs, we in [what] the military calls that an indicator that things aren’t going well in the Kremlin,” he added later.
The ministry of defence said the claim of rocket strikes was incorrect and a “provocation”, and the Federal Security Service (FSB) launched an investigation into calls for an “armed insurrection”.
It called on Wagner fighters to “not fulfil Prigozhin’s criminal and treasonous orders, and to take measures to detain him”.
• Putin’s private warlord is plotting power grab, Wagner defector warns[4]
It added that Prigozhin’s “statements and actions are effectively a call to start an armed civil conflict on the territory of Russia and a stab in the back for Russian service personnel fighting against pro-fascist Ukrainian forces”.
The FSB said the decision to investigate Prigozhin for armed insurrection was the result of “the seriousness of the situation and the threat of escalation of the stand in off in Russia”.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said: “President Putin has been informed about all events surrounding Prigozhin. The necessary measures are being taken.”
The Russian defence ministry also suggested that Ukraine’s military might seek to capitalise on the front lines in the east of the country.
“Taking advantage of [Yevgeny] Prigozhin’s provocation to disorganise the situation, the Kyiv regime near the Bakhmut front is concentrating units ... for offensive actions,” the ministry said in a statement carried by news agencies.
Prigozhin has been engaged in a months-long feud[5] with the military top brass, accusing them of denying his fighters vital supplies while they bear the brunt of fighting government troops in Ukraine as part of Russia’s invasion.
President Putin was being kept informed about the situation, the Kremlin said
MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AP
Earlier on Friday he rubbished the official rationale in Moscow that Ukraine had to be attacked last year because it was a danger to pro-Russian separatist areas.
“The ministry of defence is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there was insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole Nato bloc,” the Wagner chief said.
Wagner mercenaries spearheaded Russia’s capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut last month, and Prigozhin has used its battlefield success, achieved at enormous human cost, to publicly criticise Moscow with seeming impunity.
However, on Friday he for the first time dismissed Putin’s core justifications for invading Ukraine in February last year.
“The war was needed . . . so that [defence minister Sergei] Shoigu could become a marshal . . . so that he could get a second Hero [of Russia] medal,” Prigozhin said in a video clip. “The war wasn’t needed to demilitarise or denazify Ukraine.”
A White House spokesman said last night that President Biden was closely following the situation in Russia. He added that the president had been briefed after returning from a campaign event at a hotel near the executive mansion.
“We are monitoring the situation and will be consulting with allies and partners on these developments,” said Adam Hodge, a US National Security Council spokesman.