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The head of the Russian mercenary group that has seen much of the toughest fighting in Ukraine on Friday accused Russia of killing thousands of fighters and vowed to stop the “evil” of the military leadership. Russia, in turn, announced it was investigating the outspoken leader on charges of “armed mutiny.”
“Those who destroyed our lads, who destroyed the lives of many tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, will be punished. I ask that no one offer resistance,” Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the paramilitary Wagner Group, said in a series of audio messages on his official Telegram channel.
In the audio, Prigozhin said, without providing evidence, that Russia’s military leadership was responsible for the deaths of 2,000 fighters.
He warned that his troops would move to punish Russia’s defense minister and urged the army not to offer resistance. Prigozhin declared that “this is not an armed rebellion, but a march of justice.”
Officials in Russia quickly launched a criminal investigation of Prigozhin “on charges of armed mutiny.” Russian State TV interrupted regular programming to announce that Prigozhin’s claims were “fake and nothing more than provocation.”
President Vladimir Putin had “been informed of all the events around Prigozhin. Necessary measures are being taken,” the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
In the audio messages on Telegram, the Wagner Group chief accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of ordering a rocket strike on Wagner’s field camps in Ukraine, where its soldiers are fighting on behalf of Russia against Ukranian forces.
The claims have not been verified.
An unverified video posted on the “Razgruzka Wagner” (Wagner’s Combat Vest) Telegram channel showed a scene in a forest where small fires were burning and trees appeared to have been broken by force.
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It carried the caption: “A missile attack was launched on the camps of PMC Wagner. Many victims. According to eyewitnesses, the strike was delivered from the rear, that is, it was delivered by the military of the Russian Ministry of Defense.”
Prigozhin vowed to avenge the incident: “There are 25,000 of us and we are going to figure out why chaos is happening in the country.”
But he also added: “This is not a military coup.”
Prigozhin, whose frequent tirades on social media belie his limited role in the war as head of the Wagner private military company, has for months been openly accusing the defense minister and Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, of rank incompetence.
On Friday, he for the first time dismissed Russia’s core justifications for invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year in what it calls a “special military operation.”
“The war was needed … so that [Defense Minister Sergei] Shoigu could become a marshal … so that he could get a second ‘Hero’ [of Russia] medal,” Prigozhin said in another audio message. “The war wasn’t needed to demilitarize or denazify Ukraine.”
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed.
