In videos posted on social media early on Saturday, Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that he was at the headquarters of the Southern Military District (SMD) in Rostov and demanded that defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov come to the city, 1,000 kilometres south of Moscow. The videos could not be verified.
“We have arrived here, we want to receive the chief of the general staff and Shoigu,” Prigozhin said in one video, seated between two senior Russian generals. “Unless they come, we’ll be here, we’ll blockade the city of Rostov and head for Moscow.”
Unconfirmed reports and videos that they’ve taken Voronezh with no resistance. 500km from Moscow.
Edit:: update:
A Russian security source told Reuters on Saturday that Wagner Group mercenary fighters had taken control of all military facilities in the city of Voronezh, around 500 km (310 miles)south of Moscow.
Will probably fail, but likely won’t be the first uprising. And it’s not as if Russia has troops to spare either.
Pull too many troops from the front line? Ukraine will exploit it.
Pull too many troops from behind the front line? Increased desertion of troops on the front line.
Pull too many troops from another Russian region? Possibility of an uprising there.
I doubt there’s going to be an actual uprising. Prigozhin is a windbag: he never follows through. Remember when he was saying that Wagner would pull out of Bakhmut unless they get ammo 'n shit?
They didn’t get munitions, and they didn’t pull out.
I mean, he’s invading Russia now.
I’d say that a bit more stern than just pulling out.
wagner territorial gains in russia dramatically faster than in ukraine.
From what he was saying, the Russian army has been stepping out of the way, letting him pass, or even joining them instead of fighting.
This still smells fishy, Russia never says the truth and Putin would never admit this so easily. Seems like some sort of exit strategy for Putin not to take the blame of a failed war. But let’s hope it’s true
Somebody’s getting a taste of what it could be like to become the leader of Russia or the Russian army… If this guy overthrows Putin and ends the war in Ukraine, it would be very interesting. He probably just wants to go on killing people in peace in some other country without getting interference from incompetent generals meddling in his operation. Putin messed that up.
Well, that’s an interesting monkey wrench in the mechanics.
Good news everybody!
tl;dr:
Authorities in Moscow have clamped down on security as the head of the Wagner mercenary group claimed to have seized control of all military sites in the city of Rostov-on-Don and demanded that Russia’s military leadership come to him after accusing them of killing his forces. In videos posted on social media early on Saturday, Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that he was at the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov and demanded that defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov come to the city, 1,000 kilometres south of Moscow. State-run Channel 1 also broke into regular programming early Saturday for a special news bulletin in which the country’s best-known news anchor, Yekaterina Andreyeva, denied Prigozhin’s claims of a Russian military attack against his fighters and repeated the FSB statement. The string of statements marked an unprecedented escalation of infighting among Russia’s elite, which has pitted Prigozhin against defence minister Sergei Shoigu and senior military commanders. Earlier on Friday, Prigozhin had accused Moscow’s leadership of lying to the public about the justifications for invading Ukraine, denying Moscow’s claims that Kyiv was planning to launch an offensive on the Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine in February 2022.
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