Wagner Group boss, “Putin’s butcher,” says Russia at risk of losing Ukraine war and facing a “revolution”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s notorious Wagner Group private mercenary army, has warned that Russia could face a “revolution” and lose its war in Ukraine unless the country’s “elite” fight on. Not fully committed and put the country in the “North”. Korea mode, “with martial law, to get results on the next lines.

In a lengthy video interview with a pro-war, pro-Kremlin blogger, Prigozhin spoke of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his daughter Ksenia, a sports executive, whose New Year’s wartime holiday in Dubai was followed by Russian Expressed displeasure with the public.

“Revolution” threatens Russia

“The children of the aristocracy… allow themselves to live public, fat, carefree lives,” Prigozhin fumed, “while the children of others return dismembered in zinc coffins.”

“This dualism can end as it did in 1917, with a revolution, when the soldiers rise first, and then their loved ones,” he said of the country more than a century ago. warned, referring to the Russian Revolution that overthrew the monarchy. Prigozhin said that Russian citizens could raid the homes of the elite with “pitch forks” and not think there were hundreds of them, now the relatives of the dead are in the tens of thousands, and there will probably be hundreds of thousands.

This is hardly the first time that Prigosan has criticized the country’s top officials or its political and business elite, whom he considers incompetent and even accused of treason for owning foreign property and sending their children abroad. has also applied, but the interview stood out for his strictness. Criticism of strategic mistakes by Russian military forces in Ukraine war.

“Prepare for a hard battle”

“We attacked aggressively and threw our boots all over Ukraine, looking for Nazis,” Prigozhin said. “We got to Kiev, pulled up our pants, and retreated. Onward to Kherson, where we also didn’t keep our pants up and retreated, and nothing seems to be working for us.”

He said the vague goals outlined by his longtime ally President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials at the start of the war, such as The goal is to “decolonize” and “demilitarize” Ukraine.had failed.

Prigozhin himself refrained from criticizing Putin. He even reiterated his devotion to the Russian leader, the war in Ukraine and the Russian motherland, blaming Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov for the chain of command and corruption that led the Russian armed forces to Ukraine. Not prepared for a fierce battle. Western-backed resistance.

Prigozhin, who got rich on government catering contracts and has since branched out. CBS News has found out through its own investigation.With a vast and brutal international criminal organization bankrolling his own private army, he offered two possible scenarios for how he thinks the war in Ukraine could end for Russia:

“There are optimistic and pessimistic scenarios,” he said. “The optimism, which I don’t really believe in, is that Europe and the United States will tire of the Ukraine conflict, then China will bring everyone to the negotiating table.” Will do,” he said. “We would agree that everything we have already confiscated is ours, and everything that has not been confiscated is not ours. This is an unlikely scenario. “

Instead, Prigozhin said, Ukraine could acquire more Western weapons and ramp up its long-anticipated retaliation, which “could be successful in some places.”

“They’re going to try to restore their 2014 borders, and that could easily happen; they’re going to invade Crimea, they’re going to try to blow up the Crimean bridge, cut supply lines, and that’s the scenario for us. Namah will not be good, so we need to be ready for a tough battle,” he continued.

“We are in such a position that we can lose Russia, which is the main problem… We need to impose martial law,” Prigozhin concluded.

Prigozen presents the death toll of the Wagner group.

Chief Wagner gave his first estimate of the casualty level among his company’s mercenaries, saying that he Recruited 50,000 criminals from Russian prisons. During the war, 20% of them were killed, along with 10,000 other forces recruited on contract.

The White House said in early May that around 10,000 Wagner fighters had been killed around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the bloodiest fighting of the war since December alone.

It is impossible to verify the American estimate or Prigozhin’s own figures, which are double, but cover the full 15 months of the war.

Russia’s defense ministry has not released casualty figures since September, when it said only 6,000 regular soldiers had been killed in the war – a number that Western intelligence and military experts say is too low.

“Putin’s Butcher”

For the first time, Prigozhin also commented on his nickname, “Putin’s Chef,” given to him by Russian investigative journalists when they uncovered his extensive government catering contracts.

“I’ve never been a chef; I used to be a restaurateur and quite successful. I can’t cook myself. They should have just come up with ‘Putin’s Butchery’ instead,” Prigozhin said in an apparent reference to his brutal tactics. He said. Henceforth mercenaries are deployed. Ukraine To Central Africa.

Prigozhin’s ability to deliver scathing criticism of senior Russian officials with seeming impunity, then amplified by groups of influential pro-war bloggers on Russian Telegram channels, has surprised many Russia watchers. Similar comments, even scathing ones, have landed dozens of political dissidents and others in jail under draconian laws that Russia’s rubber-stamp parliament passed to silence dissent at the start of the invasion of Ukraine. .

But Prigosan and his mercenaries have claimed some front-line success – mostly by throwing A wave of war-ready and ill-equipped criminals As cannon fodder, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.

These limited successes, after months of humiliating defeats by the regular army, prompted Putin recently to congratulate both Wagner and the military on taking control of Bakhmut, although Ukraine still insists the city is There is a fight going on.

Many have taken Putin’s praise as confirmation that, despite his public antics, Prigozhin still commands high-level approval for his dedication to Russia’s war effort.

“I love my homeland. I obey Putin. To hell with Shoigu,” Prigozhin said in his latest slogan. “We will keep fighting.”