ZeroHedge.com
Will Wagner mercenary firm continue to exist or not? Does more punishment or possible future imprisonment await Prigozhin, or will he merely lead his private army from a posh hotel in Minsk? Will Wagner remain active as a significant fighting force on the Ukraine battlefield? These are some of the big questions that remain unclear after the shocking weekend turmoil set in motion by Prigozhin. But what is clear is that he’s still defending his actions as necessary, while hitting out once again at the Russian Defense Ministry and top leadership.
The Wagner founder and chief has on Monday issued his first full explanation of his actions which began Friday, setting off Russia’s first major internal crisis of the Ukraine war, which was met with denunciations of ‘treason’ and ‘armed mutiny’ by President Putin as well as the top military commanders.
Geopolitical analyst Dmitri Alperovitch has offered a hasty translation and paraphrase of the about 11-minute audio message posted to Wagner’s Telegram channel. Alperovitch concludes of the new message, “Prigozhin remains defiant and proud of his action. Certainly not acting like a man who had been defeated.” And there is “no word about his current whereabouts.”
First, some key takeaways via Bloomberg:
- March toward Moscow showed serious security problems in the country, he said in a recording released on Telegram that didn’t specify from where he was speaking
- Prigozhin said he launched march because he wanted to preserve Wagner as a military group and not come under the command of the Defense Ministry
- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko helped find a negotiated solution to the weekend’s events, he confirms
The translation and quick paraphrase of Prigozhin’s new audio message explaining his rebellion can be viewed below [emphasis ZH]…
* * *
Prigozhin confirms that the mutiny was all about Shoigu’s June 10th order to dissolve PMCs like Wagner. Again says that there was a missile attack on the camp on Friday and that 30 Wagner personnel were killed.
Claims his objective of the march was not to show aggression (ed: strange way of showing it). The columns had marched for 780 km. He says no one was killed… on the ground (and the pilot losses are not his fault – they provoked him).
Says Wagner column suffered 2 KIAs (but says they were not their personnel but MoD personnel that had joined them), as well as several wounded.
Prigozhin: ‘The goal of the march was not to let PMC Wagner be dissolved and to bring accountability to military leadership for the mistakes made in the war’.
Prigozhin: We stopped when we realized there would be a battle and lots of losses near Moscow. We determined that the demonstration up to that point was sufficient.
Prigozhin: Our decision to turn around was based on 2 factors:
1. We didn’t want to spill Russian blood (ed: you did)
2. We went on a protest demonstration, not to overturn power in the Kremlin.
Prigozhin: Lukashenko offered a solution to preserve Wagner (ed: as I said, this is all about his business interests with Wagner).
Prigozhin: In 24 hours Wagner covered the same distance that the Russian forces could have covered on February 24, 2022 to Kyiv and Uzgorod (one of the western most towns in Ukraine) – if they had been as prepared as Wagner, the war could have been over in a day.
Prigozhin: Russian citizens were greeting us with Russian and Wagner flags. They were ecstatic to see us and continue to write to us even now. Some are disappointed that we stopped because they saw in our march support for the fight against government bureaucracy.
Prigozhin remains defiant and proud of his action. Certainly not acting like a man who had been defeated. No word about his current whereabouts.