{"id":93868,"date":"2023-06-23T19:53:17","date_gmt":"2023-06-24T00:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=93868"},"modified":"2023-06-23T19:53:17","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T00:53:17","slug":"93868","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=93868","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Head of Wagner Group Launches Armed Coup Against Russian Army<\/a><\/p>\n

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Yevgeny Prigozhin<\/a>, the leader of the mercenary Wagner group, has called for a coup against Russia\u2019s military leaders, saying he had 25,000 fighters ready to \u201cend this mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russian soldiers across the country were put on high alert on Friday night after Prigozhin urged citizens to stay inside and threatened to march on the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

The Wagner group chief issued the call after accusing Russian generals of carrying out on airstrike on his fighters in Ukraine. He said \u201chuge number\u201d had been killed but provided no evidence.<\/p>\n

In an audio message late on Friday night, Prigozhin said his troops are entering Rostov.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

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\u201cWe crossed the state border in all places,\u201d Prigozhin said. \u201cThe border guards came out to meet and hugged our fighters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are entering Rostov. We don\u2019t fight children. Shoigu kills children. He put 18-year-old boys against us. These guys will live and go back to their mothers. But we will destroy everything that gets in the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FSB, Russia\u2019s main intelligence service, said that it had opened a criminal case against Prigozhin, once considered one of Vladimir Putin\u2019s most trusted fixers, and declared him to be a \u201cforeign agent\u201d.<\/p>\n

The case accuses Prigozhin of launching an \u201carmed rebellion inside Russia\u201d. The FSB added: \u201cThis is punishable with between 12 and 20 years in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also called on Wagner group members to ignore Prighozin and arrest him if they could.<\/p>\n

In his Telegram audio message calling for an overthrow of Russian military leaders, Prighozin said: \u201cThe commanders\u2019 council of the Wagner Private Military Company has reached a decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe evil that the country\u2019s military leadership perpetuates must be stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ask you not to resist. Anyone who does will be considered a threat and destroyed. That goes for any checkpoints and aviation on our way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPresidential power, the government, the police and Russian guard will work as usual.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a military coup, but a march of justice. Our actions do not interfere with the troops in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 25,000 of us and we are going to figure out what this chaos is happening in the country,\u201d he said in a later update. \u201cAnyone who wants to join can. We need to end this mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin\u2019s spokesman, said that the Russian leader was aware of \u201cthe situation around Prigozhin\u201d.<\/p>\n

Later reports said that Putin\u2019s motorcade was seen speeding through Moscow to the Kremlin from his residence in the suburbs of the capital.<\/p>\n

General Sergei Surovikin, the deputy head of the armed forces in Ukraine, called on Mr Prigohzin to \u2018stop the convoys and return them to their bases.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether we have been on a difficult path,\u201d Gen Surovikin said. \u201cWe fought together, took risks, suffered losses and won together. We are the same blood. We are warriors. I urge you to stop.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation in our country to deteriorate. You can\u2019t play into the hands of the enemy in these difficult times for our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

News reports also said that an emergency plan called \u201ckrepost\u201d, or fortress, had deployed Russian soldiers around the capital and to strategic locations.<\/p>\n

While Mr Prighozin was careful to say he was not launching a coup against president Putin, without control of the armed forces the Russian leader would be profoundly weakened and at risk of being deposed.<\/p>\n

In Rostov, a large city in the south of Russia that the Russian top military command have been using as their base, armoured personnel carriers were seen guarding street corners.<\/p>\n

Prigozhin is a fierce critic of Sergei Shoigu, Russia\u2019s Defence Minister, and Valery Gerasimov, the head of the military.<\/p>\n

He said that he wanted to avenge the ordinary Russian soldiers who have been killed by incompetent leadership since the start of the invasion of Ukraine last February.<\/p>\n

Russia has lost an estimated 220,000 men in the war.<\/p>\n

Prigozhin has been highly visible in Russia\u2019s regions over the past few weeks\u00a0since withdrawing from the Donbas region<\/a>\u00a0in eastern Ukraine where his forces captured the town of Bakhmut.<\/p>\n

He has given a series of talks about the war, focusing on his criticism of Mr Shoigu.<\/p>\n

And on Friday evening, he accused Mr Shoigu of ordering the Russian military to shell a Wagner camp and published a video of what he said was the remains of the destroyed camp.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the Russian Ministry of Defence denied this.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the messages and video frames distributed on social networks on behalf of Prigozhin about the alleged strike by the Russian Ministry of Defence on the rear camps of Wagner do not correspond to reality,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

War in Ukraine \u2018based on lies\u2019<\/h2>\n

Earlier on Friday Prigozhin claimed that Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine was based on lies that the country was a threat to Moscow and its citizens.<\/p>\n

In an explosive video, he dismantled the case Vladimir Putin has offered for\u00a0the war that has killed or wounded<\/a>\u00a0more than 220,000 Russian soldiers.<\/p>\n

While the outspoken Wagner commander has often criticised\u00a0the conduct of Russia\u2019s defence ministry<\/a>, he has not previously attacked the central planks of Moscow\u2019s propaganda.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ministry of Defence deceived the president and the public, telling them that there was insane aggression from Ukraine and that they were going to attack us with the entire Nato bloc,\u201d Prigohzin said.<\/p>\n

The Wagner founder claimed instead that the war was motivated by the personal ambition of his longtime foe Sergei Shoigu, Russia\u2019s defence minister, and the avarice of Russian oligarchs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe war was needed by Shoigu to become a Marshal not in order to return Russian citizens to our bosoms and not in order to demilitarise and\u00a0denazify Ukraine<\/a>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe oligarchs needed the war. This is the clan that manages Russia today. And the second part of the operation was to install Medvedchuk as Ukraine\u2019s president,\u201d he said in a reference to\u00a0Viktor Medvedchuk<\/a>, a pro-Russia oligarch who is also a close friend of Putin.<\/p>\n

Prigohzin, despite his repeated broadsides at the defence ministry, has refrained from criticising the Russian president, often instead portraying him as\u00a0misled by his underlings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet his latest assertion directly contradicts the rationale for the war proclaimed by Putin, who said when sending his tanks into Ukraine that it was to demilitarise and \u201cdenazify\u201d a country that posed a threat to Russia.<\/p>\n

It is a narrative that Russian authorities defend\u00a0with fines or prison terms<\/a>\u00a0for those deemed to have spread \u201cfalsehoods\u201d about the war.<\/p>\n

There was no response to those claims from the Defence Ministry, which has ignored previous complaints from Prigozhin, in public at least. Nor was there any immediate reaction from the Kremlin, which has also declined in the past to comment on Prigozhin\u2019s outbursts.<\/p>\n

Putin has, however, backed a Defence Ministry order, which Prigozhin opposes, that mercenary groups like Wagner must sign contracts putting themselves under ministry control by July 1.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Prigozhin had accused the top brass of lying to Putin and the Russian people about the\u00a0scale of Russian losses and setbacks in Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Friday\u2019s video, he said Moscow could have struck a deal with Volodymr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, before the war, that the conflict had been a disaster for Russia, and that tens of thousands of young lives had been sacrificed needlessly, including members of Russia\u2019s most capable forces.<\/p>\n

Portraying the top brass as vodka- and cognac-swilling fools who lunch on caviar, he alleged the Russian war effort was being hobbled by corruption.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are bathing in our own blood,\u201d he said. \u201cTime is running out fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Igor Girkin, a staunchly pro-war nationalist blogger who is\u00a0accused of committing war crimes<\/a>\u00a0in Donbas in 2014, called Prigozhin an enemy of Russia after watching the interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrigozhin should have been brought to a military tribunal for a lot of things. Now also for betrayal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Head of Wagner Group Launches Armed Coup Against Russian Army Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary Wagner group, has called for a coup against Russia\u2019s military leaders, saying he had 25,000 fighters ready to \u201cend this mess.\u201d Russian soldiers across the country were put on high alert on Friday night after Prigozhin urged citizens … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,86,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","category-just-desserts","category-you-cant-make-this-up"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93869,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93868\/revisions\/93869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}