Prigozhin blames invasion on defense minister, says it wasn’t necessary (Update: Russian army strikes Wagner base! Civil war?)

Every time I think Yevgeny Prigozhin has probably reached the end of his leash, he just goes ahead and says something even more surprising. I really thought he’d reached the limit when he refused to allow his mercenaries to sign an agreement with the army even though Putin (seemingly) ordered him to do it. As far as I know, that hasn’t been resolved yet. Wagner forces still haven’t signed an agreement.

But this latest public statement goes way beyond that. Now he is undermining Russia’s entire justification for the war in Ukraine, claiming the whole thing was a lie concocted by Defense Minister Shoigu for his own selfish reasons.

Russia did not face an imminent security threat to justify its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary outfit, said in a bombshell video posted on social media Friday.

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine were not going to attack Russia with the NATO bloc,” Prigozhin explained in the half-hour tirade released by his press service.

“The Russian Defense Ministry is deceiving the public and the president,” he added.

Yes, he’s still offering a fig leaf excuse for Putin but he’s doing so by undermining the story Putin himself has embraced about the war, i.e. that it was needed to “denazify” Ukraine. Prigozhin said that was all a lie.

“There was nothing out of the ordinary happening on Feb. 24 … the Defence Ministry is trying to deceive society and the president and tell us a story about how there was crazy aggression from Ukraine and that they were planning to attack us with the whole of NATO,” Prigozhin said, calling the official version “a beautiful story”.

“The war was needed … so that Shoigu could become a marshal … so that he could get a second ‘Hero’ [of Russia] medal. The war wasn’t needed to demilitarise or denazify Ukraine.”

He then argued that the real point was for the oligarchs to divide up more assets.

“The task was to divide material assets (in Ukraine),” he said. “There was massive theft in the Donbas, but they wanted more.”

At this point, we’re sort of stuck between two possible explanations, both of which are hard to believe. The first is that Prigozhin has gone rogue and is saying what he believes regardless of how it looks. The idea behind this might be that he sees himself as a future leader of Russia who is essentially untouchable right now thanks to his victory in Bakhmut. Could he really think he can say whatever he wants, even defy Putin? It’s pretty hard to believe.

The alternative theory is that he’s doing all of this at Putin’s behest. But if so, why? The BBC tried to follow the logic of this idea and couldn’t really get very far.

Is the tough-talking angry Prigozhin we see and hear on Telegram a fully-fledged Kremlin project? If so, his blame the war on Shoigu and oligarchs rant could be designed to shield Putin from public criticism, while offering the Kremlin a possible way out of a conflict that hasn’t gone to plan, without damaging the president or the political system…

But would that work?

After all, Putin is so closely associated with this war. In his address to the nation on 24 February 2022, the Kremlin leader made it clear that it was his decision to launch the so-called “special military operation”, the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Plus, arguing that the president has been woefully deceived by a minister he appointed doesn’t reflect glowingly on the man at the top.

Of the two, I initially thought the second idea seemed more likely. It’s too hard to believe Prigozhin is saying this stuff without Putin’s blessing. People who do that wind up in prison or dead.

But if that’s the case, if this is a Kremlin project, what is Putin hoping to accomplish? None of this makes him look good. Prigozhin looks like a loose cannon and Putin looks like a weak leader who can’t control his appointees. The only way I can make any sense of it is to conclude the war is going a lot worse than Russia is letting on. Indeed, another statement Prigozhin made today is that Russia is in retreat right now.

Speaking to the camera in a video uploaded to Telegram on Friday, Yevgeny Prigozhin said “the Russian army is in retreat on the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson fronts,” adding that Kyiv’s troops are “pushing back the Russian army.”

According to the Moscow Times he said:

“We are washing ourselves in blood. No one is bringing reserves. What they tell us is the deepest deception,” Prigozhin said, referring to Putin and Shoigu’s claims that Russia is successfully pushing back Ukrainian counterattacks.

He seems to be directly undercutting the war effort and Putin’s own claims about how it is going (Putin says the army is successfully repelling the counteroffensive). Would Putin really have approved statements that contradict his own? It’s enough to almost convince me that Prigozhin really is just shooting off his mouth in a way that seems very dangerous. Here’s a bit of Prigozhin’s latest speech.

I guess the bottom line is that Prigozhin is still breathing. So long as that’s the case, Putin must be okay with what he’s saying. But if Prigozhin has a mysterious accident or falls out a tall window sometime soon, then we’ll know for certain he went too far.

Update: Ed saw this and sent it to me. What in the hell?!

#BREAKING Wagner chief accuses Russia military leadership of bombing its forces, vows to retaliate pic.twitter.com/KW2pr6VMcj

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 23, 2023

I don’t think that was part of his statement earlier today, at least I didn’t see anyone else reporting it. I have lots of questions starting with: Did this really happen? Prigozhin has been trying to push Defense Minister Shoigu’s buttons for months. Maybe Shoigu snapped?

Anyway, this doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that is some kind of 11-dimensional chess by Putin. This sounds like one party of his army trying to kill another part of his army. We’ll have to wait and see what comes next.

I have no idea what they are saying in this video but notice the quote allegedly from Prigozhin: “A huge number of our comrades died, we will decide how to respond to this atrocity.” Is he talking about striking back against the Russian army?

BREAKING ⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡

Prigozhin said that the Russian Armed Forces launched a missile attack on the Wagner PMC camps.

“A huge number of our comrades died, we will decide how to respond to this atrocity” – Prigozhin pic.twitter.com/vaYOKXGov7

— MAKS 23 👀🇺🇦 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) June 23, 2023

This situation has gone completely nuts. This could lead to a coup or maybe this is Putin putting down a potential coup. Whatever it is, this can’t possibly be good news for the Russian war effort. This is Russia falling apart before our eyes.