Wagner Group’s Prigozhin Vows Retribution Against Army Leadership Following Attack on Mercenary Forces

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of private military group Wagner, has accused Russia’s military leadership of killing a “huge amount” of his forces in strikes and vowed to retaliate. Russia’s domestic intelligence service, the FSB, has opened a criminal case against Prigozhin, accusing him of “calling for an armed rebellion” and urged his own mercenaries to detain him. Prigozhin has also accused Russia’s Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, of deceiving Putin about the status of the Ukrainian battlefield. The Wagner chief has claimed that a rocket attack in the Russian region of Rostov had killed scores of his fighters and vowed to take “revenge” and “stop the evil brought by the military leadership of the country” . Prigozhin has also published a video which he claims shows the aftermath of a rocket attack by the Russian ministry of defense on a Wagner camp.

The FSB said Prigozhin’s statements and actions were “in fact a call to start an armed civil conflict on the territory of the Russian Federation and a stab in the back to Russian servicemen fighting pro-fascist Ukrainian forces” .