If ever there was a time for Kremlin worried about an uprising by the private army losing control of its most, now it seems to be it.
Wagner Corporation founder Yevgeny Prigozhin went from accusing the Russian military of treason to flooding the internet with gruesome pictures of the country’s war dead.
“Who is responsible for their deaths? Prigozhin said Wednesday in a comment on the pro-war Telegram channel, pointing to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. Earlier in the day, he accused the two of trying to “destroy” the Wagner Corporation by deliberately cutting off their ammunition supply.
To convince his point of view on Wednesday, he released a photo showing rows of bloody and wounded corpses that he said were Wagner warriors killed trying to keep the Kremlin alive. control Ukraine.
“No steps have been taken to dispense ammunition. I’m posting a photo below, this is one of the gathering points of the dead. These are the guys who died yesterday of starvation. They should have been five times less,” said Prigozhin.
“Wagner, like a crowd of beggars, is asking unit commanders to help in some way. We will not leave Bakhmut. We will die twice as much as we have, until everyone is gone. And when the Wagernites run out, Shoigu and Gerasimov will most likely have to take up machine guns,” he said.
While Prigozhin has never been shy to criticize Russia’s top military leadership, his outrage is quickly spreading through the ranks of pro-war military bloggers the Kremlin has relied on to bolster public support for the war.
And it risks overshadowing the message “everything is going according to plan and we are all united” that Putin wants to send ahead of the one-year anniversary of the all-out invasion, when the Kremlin just won a little territory and the whole territory. Generations of young people die to represent military conquest.
Even as Putin took to the stage at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium for Wednesday’s pro-war rally, Wagner supporters (or bots) flooded chat of an online event live stream with angry messages demanding the military “give Wagner ammunition!”
Prigozhin – who was known for his role as commander of the armies of the Russian giants long before he admitted to being the puppeteer of the mercenary group – was suspected of sending messages. Several pro-Kremlin Telegram channels have also begun conducting polls as to who their followers would like to see win the “terrible confrontation” —Shoigu and Gerasimov, or Prigozhin.
96 of the more than 15,000 people who responded to a poll on Tuesday voted for Prigozhin.
But anger towards the Russian military command has spread beyond Prigozhin and even Wagner.
Igor Bezler, one of the Kremlin’s most famous proxy commanders during the first wave of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014, called for the assassination of Shoigu and Gerasimov in a recently intercepted call with a FSB officer, according to Ukrainian intelligence.
“First Shoigu needs to be shot, and then Gerasimov, damn it. And then half of your damn FSB will be hanged and their donkey bet on, and then we’ll start fighting,” a man identified as Bezler said in an audio recording of the conversation. purposeful call.
“As long as all these bastards are in power… it’s all nonsense,” he said, criticizing Putin for being “stupid” and others in power before shouting, “You guys. Our leaders are idiots!”
Bezler isn’t the only one to come up with the idea of putting a “bullet in the head” of the country’s top military.
The Wagner-connected Gray Zone channel on Wednesday shared a letter, apparently referring to unnamed military officials, saying that if they lacked the “honor” to commit suicide because of their mistakes, then the least they could do was take off their uniforms to stop carrying them. “humiliation.”
