Russian generals late on Friday accused Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the outspoken mercenary tycoon, of making an attempt to mount a coup towards President Vladimir V. Putin, because the Russian authorities opened an investigation into Mr. Prigozhin for “organizing an armed riot.”
The long-running feud between Mr. Prigozhin and the Russian army over the conflict in Ukraine has now escalated into an open confrontation, establishing the most important problem to Mr. Putin’s authority since he launched his invasion of Ukraine 16 months in the past.
Movies circulating broadly on social media confirmed that army and nationwide guard armored autos had been deployed in Moscow and the southern metropolis of Rostov-on-Don, close to the entrance line in Ukraine the place Mr. Prigozhin’s fighters had been working.
Mr. Prigozhin on Friday accused the Russian army of attacking his Wagner mercenary forces and, in a sequence of recordings posted to social media, pledged that his fighters would retaliate. Russian authorities, in flip, accused Mr. Prigozhin — whose broadsides towards the Russian Protection Ministry had been tolerated by Mr. Putin for months — of making an attempt to foment a revolt.
“It is a stab behind the nation and the president,” Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev, the deputy head of Russia’s army intelligence company, stated in a video attraction to Mr. Prigozhin’s fighters, urging them to name off any riot. “It is a coup.”
Mr. Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary power has proved pivotal to the Russian conflict effort in Ukraine, however in current months, he repeatedly chastised Russia’s prime brass for alleged corruption and indifference to common troopers’ lives. On Friday evening, he took his accusations to a brand new degree, claiming that the Russian army had attacked Wagner encampments, killing “an enormous variety of fighters.”
“The evil borne by the nation’s army management should be stopped,” Mr. Prigozhin stated in one in all a sequence of voice recordings posted to the Telegram social community after 9 p.m. Moscow time.
Minutes later, he recommended that his Wagner mercenary power was ready to go on the offensive towards Russia’s personal Protection Ministry, saying, “There’s 25,000 of us, and we’re going to work out why chaos is going on within the nation.”
Simply previous midnight Moscow time, Russia’s prosecutor normal introduced that Mr. Prigozhin was being investigated “on suspicion of organizing an armed riot” and would face as a lot as 20 years in jail if prosecuted.
There was no signal of the whereabouts of Mr. Prigozhin, and as of midnight Moscow time, his social media accounts had been silent for greater than an hour.
Mr. Prigozhin, a St. Petersburg restaurateur who leveraged his private connections with Mr. Putin into profitable authorities contracts, gained worldwide prominence after his on-line “troll manufacturing facility” interfered within the 2016 American presidential election — and after his Wagner fighters have been deployed in Syria and throughout Africa as a shadow power believed to be preventing for Kremlin pursuits.
For months the Russian conflict effort has been hampered by the bitter feud between Mr. Prigozhin and prime army leaders, whom he has accused in scathing phrases of incompetence in conducting the conflict. He has asserted that Russia’s prime brass have refused to offer Wagner forces with wanted ammunition whilst they fought alongside the Russian army for management of the Ukrainian metropolis of Bakhmut.
However by no means earlier than had Mr. Prigozhin accused Russia’s army leaders of attacking his forces, nor asserted in such stark phrases that the Kremlin’s said justification for the conflict was nonsense.
In a 30-minute video launched on Friday, Mr. Prigozhin had described his nation’s invasion of Ukraine as a “racket” perpetrated by a corrupt elite chasing cash and glory with out concern for Russian lives.
He additionally accused the Russian minister of protection, Sergei Okay. Shoigu, of orchestrating a lethal assault with missiles and helicopters on camps to the rear of the Russian traces in Ukraine, the place his troopers of fortune have been bivouacked. And he accused Mr. Shoigu of overseeing the strikes himself from the city of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, close to Ukraine.
The mercenary chief’s claims couldn’t be instantly verified. The Russian protection ministry denied the allegations, saying in an announcement that the messages Mr. Prigozhin had posted about supposed strikes on Wagner camps “don’t correspond to actuality.”
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, stated that Mr. Putin was “conscious of all occasions round Prigozhin,” based on Interfax, a Russian information company.
Mr. Prigozhin’s accusations created a ripple impact amongst Russian pro-war activists, who concern that an open battle between the military and Wagner forces may threaten the Russian entrance traces in the course of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. In Ukraine, some considered his statements as extra proof of inside divisions inside the Russian conflict effort.
In an earlier videotaped speech, Mr. Prigozhin didn’t explicitly impugn Mr. Putin, as an alternative casting him as a frontrunner being misled by his officers. However in dismissing the Kremlin’s narrative that the invasion was an existential necessity for the Russian nation, Mr. Prigozhin went additional than anybody in Russia’s safety institution in publicly difficult the knowledge of the conflict.
“The conflict wasn’t wanted to return Russian residents to our bosom, nor to demilitarize or denazify Ukraine,” Mr. Prigozhin stated, referring to Mr. Putin’s preliminary justifications for the conflict. “The conflict was wanted so {that a} bunch of animals may merely exult in glory.”
Friday’s diatribes deepened the enigma of Mr. Prigozhin’s ambiguous function in Mr. Putin’s system. His Wagner troops, composed of veteran fighters in addition to hundreds of convicts whom Mr. Prigozhin personally recruited from Russian prisons, proved key in capturing the Ukrainian metropolis of Bakhmut in Could after a monthslong battle.
However, in the course of the battle for Bakhmut, Mr. Prigozhin additionally emerged as a populist political determine, excoriating Russia’s army management for corruption. His offended recordings and movies posted to the Telegram messaging community solid prime army and Kremlin officers as unaware and uncaring of the struggles of standard Russian troopers.
Thus far, Mr. Putin has not reined in Mr. Prigozhin, whilst his safety forces have jailed or fined hundreds of Russians for criticizing the army or opposing the conflict. Some individuals who know Mr. Putin have stated they consider that he nonetheless sees Mr. Prigozhin as a loyal servant making use of wanted stress on a sprawling army equipment. Others theorize that the Kremlin has orchestrated Mr. Prigozhin’s tirades towards Mr. Shoigu, the protection minister, to deflect blame from Mr. Putin himself.
However Friday’s statements sophisticated the image, with Mr. Prigozhin going after not simply Mr. Shoigu but in addition unnamed “oligarchs” round Mr. Putin, whereas casting your entire official rhetoric across the invasion as a sham. He stated there was “nothing out of the bizarre” in Ukraine’s army posture on the eve of the February 2022 invasion — difficult the Kremlin’s justification that Ukraine was on the verge of attacking Russian-backed separatist territory in Ukraine’s east.
“Our holy conflict with those that offend the Russian folks, with those that try to humiliate them, has became a racket,” he stated.
Mr. Prigozhin additionally asserted in his video that Ukraine’s counteroffensive to realize again territory was going way more poorly for Russia than the federal government was letting on. On Telegram, pro-war commentators shortly pushed again towards that declare, together with Igor Girkin, a former paramilitary commander who himself has usually criticized Russia’s prime brass.
“Prigozhin already ought to have been handed over to a army tribunal for a lot of issues,” Mr. Girkin wrote. “Now additionally for treason.”