2023-05-12 16:06:28
After months of brutal fighting – the Battle of Bakhmut might push Wagner’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin closer to the edge. Standing in front of the corpses of his fighters, he violently berated the Russian military leadership, blaming them for the deaths.
For months, Prigozhin and Vladimir Putin’s top generals, Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, have been mired in intense infighting. But now Chief Wagner’s rhetoric has become fiercer and more frequent, accusing the Russian defense minister of withholding much-needed ammunition.
And in a country where thousands have been jailed for criticizing Vladimir Putin’s war – Prigozhin gets away with his tantrums.
This is because Putin doesn’t fully trust his military and needs Prigozhin, believes Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, who said that Putin is “suspicious regarding control and political stability, Prigozhin is a tool to keep the military off balance if not to keep them in check”.
The infighting appears to be costing Russia lives and losing momentum, as the Ukrainian military says it is now making gains in Bakhmut.
And while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the long-awaited counter-attack of his forces has not yet begun, today Prigozhin once more accuses the Russian army of stopping and fleeing, saying: “Those lands that were liberated with the blood and lives of our comrades who advance every day by tens or hundreds of meters for many months, Today they are being abandoned almost without a fight by those who were supposed to protect us.”
Bakhmut was supposed to be a much-needed victory for Putin, but it might lead to big problems to come, says Soldatov.
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