Prigozhin may be Putin successor or his next victim

Biden and NATO are strong. Russia is falling apart. All you need to know.

Russian warlord’s feud with Putin’s generals explodes into the open with gruesome PR campaign

Analysis by Nathan Hodge, CNN
Published 11:58 AM EST, Thu February 23, 2023

It has to count as one of the strangest PR campaigns in memory: using a pile of corpses to make your case to the powers that be.

That’s what Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, appears to have done this week in an unusual public appeal for ammunition for his fighters in Ukraine. And in the process, he has cast a harsh light on his open feud with Russia’s military leadership on the eve of the anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Prigozhin posted a picture on Telegram showing the bodies of several dozen slain Wagner fighters, piled unceremoniously in a courtyard. Alongside that shocking photo, he posted the image of a formal request from Wagner for more ammunition, pointing the finger of blame squarely at the Russian Ministry of Defense for squandering one of those lives.


Prigozhin posted a photo showing dozens of dead Wagner fighters, blaming "shell starvation" and lack of ammo supplies.
“This is one of the gathering places of the dead,” Prigozhin said. “These are the guys who died yesterday due to the so-called ‘shell starvation’ [by the Russian MOD]. There should have been five times fewer of them. So mothers, wives and children will get their bodies.”

Apparently, the message got through to someone. In a message and voice note Thursday, Prigozhin said a shipment of ammunition was now on its way to his forces.

“Today at 6 am (local) it was reported that shipment of ammunition begins,” he said. “Most likely, the train has started moving … we are told that the main papers have already been signed.”

What was the rationale behind this ghoulish spectacle? Prigozhin already has a reputation for callousness and cruelty: Late last year, around the New Year’s holiday, he visited a morgue stacked withthe body bags of dead Wagner soldiers, many of whom had been recruited from prisons with a promise of amnesty.

“Their contracts are over,” he deadpanned. “They’re going home.”

But Prigozhin’s latest stunt appeared to raise the ante in the oligarch’s confrontation with Russia’s defense establishment, and with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Before Russia’s February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin was a shadowy figure. While the activities of Wagner were well documented – the mercenaries had appeared on battlefields in Syria and Libya as well as on training missions in the Central African Republic – the Russian government more or less denied its existence.

All that changed after Russia’s military suffered humiliating setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine. Prigozhin – a canny political entrepreneur without any official government position – began openly taking credit for Wagner’s efforts to secure some territorial gains, particularly in the battles raging around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

He even began to acknowledge his role in Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election, admitting that he had founded the Internet Research Agency, the notorious St. Petersburg troll farm that the US government has sanctioned for interfering in American elections.

His unexpected rise prompted speculation about possible elite infighting in Moscow as Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine sputtered. One of Prigozhin’s chief rivals has been Shoigu, who had clashed with the businessman over military contracts given to and then taken from one of the oligarch’s enterprises.

In one recent recording, Prigozhin railed against unnamed “functionaries” – a likely swipe against Shoigu – who “have breakfast, lunch and dinner on golden dishes and send your daughters, granddaughters and whoevers to vacation in Dubai, showing no shame at all, at the very same time that Russian soldiers are dying at the front.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has become a remote and isolated leader since the Covid-19 pandemic, has no clear successor, and some political insiders speculated that some opportunistic upstart – a Prigozhin, for instance – might sense a potential opening or chance to build a power base independent of Putin.

Certainly, Prigozhin’s outbursts would have been unthinkable before February 24, 2022, when open criticism of the defense leadership by a military contractor would not have been tolerated. Earlier this week, Prigozhin escalated his spat with Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, accusing them of “treason” for their alleged failures to support and supply the Wagner group in Ukraine.

“The Chief of the General Staff and the Minister of Defense are handing out commands right and left, that the Wagner PMC should not receive ammunition, they are also not helping with air transport,” Prigozhin claimed in a recording posted by his press service on Telegram. “This can be equated to high treason now when Wagner PMC are fighting for Bakhmut, losing hundreds of their fighters every day.”

Not everything Prigozhin says can be taken completely at face value. This is the man, after all, who helped bankroll one of Russia’s most notorious disinformation campaigns. And the complaints about ammunition starvation leave unanswered myriad questions about the precise nature of the relationship of Wagner to the Russian military, how its formations are supplied with equipment, and who ultimately exercises command and control over its forces.

In a recent report, Candace Rondeaux, the director of Future Frontlines at the Washington-based New America think tank observed, “Despite perceptions of the Wagner Group as an independent paramilitary organization, Wagner’s branding, communications, and operations are deeply intertwined with the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin, Putin’s oligarch allies, and the Russian military.”


Prigozhin, who has openly taken credit for Wagner's efforts to gain territory in the war in Ukraine, attends the funeral of a mercenary at a cemetery outside St. Petersburg, Russia, on December 24, 2022.

 

Drama Queen reporting and sharing, engineered by a Drama Queen.

 

Well, well, I ran off that worthless little troll from this discussion and stuck him back on "ignore."

Little joe found some good info for us to read. The little troll added nothing.

Oops! I forgot that I put him back on ignore. Well, same thing. I don't see the monkey business.

 

Me thinks the Wagner Chief will have an accident or be taken out by a Ukrainian missile strike. The Wagner Group has been taken a 1000+ casaulties each day in Bakmut. Most of their armor is burning on the battlefield. Then there are all the soldiers that they executed for not wanting to be forced into the Bakmut inferno.
As more lethal weapons arrive in Ukraine, esp. hundreds of western tanks/ longer range precision missile systems/ Ukraine will hopefully attack Russkies in Crimea/ then take back Donbas. This War is going to be Putin's nightmare/ ditto for all the Russians that support him.

 

He is definitely getting the worst part of this conflict. Hope he dies in lots, and lots of pain.

 

Putin is heading there. I saw a video the other day of him gripping the table, apparently due to the increasing pain in his bowels from the cancer.

May he suffer and die with pain exceeding what he has put upon the Ukranians and his own people. I still chuckle a bit thinking about him falling down the stairs and defecating himself.

 

Makes you think back to when Stalin was found lying on the floor by his maid. Then you see Kruschev wanting to call a Doctor. Just then Beria reminded him that Stalin had ordered all the Docs to be arrested by the NKVD and shot. Hence there was no one to save his miserable life.....

 

That dumbass Commie got what he deserved. I hope Commie Putin gets what is coming to him, too.