Lots of Putin cocksuckers around here think he is a hero but Putin’s butcher has some doubts. Says the Russians better live like more like north korea for a few years or they will be reliving 1917 pretty soon.
RIGA, Latvia — Fresh off his claim of victory in capturing the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Russian mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin warned that Moscow’s brutal war could plunge Russia into turmoil similar to the 1917 revolution unless its detached, wealthy elite become more directly committed to the conflict.
In a lengthy interview with Konstantin Dolgov, a political operative and pro-war blogger, Prigozhin, the founder and leader of the Wagner mercenary group, also asserted that the war had backfired spectacularly by failing to “demilitarize” Ukraine, one of President Vladimir Putin’s stated aims of the invasion. He also called for totalitarian policies.
“We are in a situation where we can simply lose Russia,” Prigozhin said, using an expletive to hammer his point. “We must introduce martial law. We unfortunately … must announce new waves of mobilization; we must put everyone who is capable to work on increasing the production of ammunition,” he said. “Russia needs to live like North Korea for a few years, so to say, close the borders … and work hard.”
“My advice to the Russian elites — get your lads, send them to war, and when you go to the funeral, when you start burying them, people will say that now everything is fair,” Prigozhin said in the interview.
Prigozhin’s rants often undermine Moscow’s official line and almost certainly would result in harsh punishment for anyone else. The country has outlawed criticism of the military and many citizens have faced prosecution.
While regular Russian military officials keep a lid on the number of casualties in Ukraine, Prigozhin said that 20,000 Wagner fighters had died in the battle for Bakhmut. Even if an undercount, the figure eclipses the last official number given by Moscow in September, when Shoigu claimed that 5,937 soldiers had died.
Military experts attribute such a high death toll among Wagner fighters to its commanders’ brutal tactics of sending waves of poorly trained convicts to exhaust Ukrainians, at times threatening the prisoners with death if they retreat.
Private military companies are technically illegal in Russia, but Prigozhin has operated with impunity, deploying his fighters to countries in the Middle East and Africa, and to Ukraine In Mali, Wagner soldiers are suspected of war crimes following reports of executions, torture, rape and abductions.
While Prigozhin has sought to cultivate an image of himself as a fighter, appearing in full battle gear on the front lines in countless videos, he falls squarely among the Putin cronies who have become billionaires off their government connections and contracts. Like his fighters, however, Prigozhin is also an ex-convict: He spent most of the 1980s in jail for robbery.
So far, Prigozhin remains unmatched in publicity, succeeding where some regular commanders have stumbled, in some cases in humiliating fashion.
Military experts, for example, pointed to a staged clip of Gen. Col. Alexander Lapin that emerged Tuesday, showing him commanding a small group of troops to fight off a mysterious two-day incursion in the Belgorod region, a staging area for Russian forces that borders Ukraine.
The clip, in which Lapin is seen walking alongside a convoy of armored vehicles shouting, “Go forward, guys! For the motherland,” was ridiculed by some Russian pro-war bloggers as “embarrassing” and “laughable.” Local officials, meanwhile, fought off questions from civilians alarmed about a breach in the border.
“I have even more questions for the Defense Ministry than you have,” Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a live question-and-answer session with local residents after militias made up of Russians fighting on Ukraine’s side in the war stormed a checkpoint in Grayvoron district and infiltrated nearby villages.
Gladkov said Tuesday that one woman died while being evacuated during the attack, and eight people were injured. Russian officials claimed to repel the attacks, while the militias responsible said on Wednesday that they were still actively fighting inside Russian territory.
“We are living in a very difficult period,” Gladkov said in a separate statement. .”
The disruptions in Belgorod continued Wednesday, with multiple drones targeting a gas pipeline and residential buildings, Gladkov said.
In his interview, Prigozhin said there was an “optimistic scenario” for Russia’s war: Western support for Ukraine wears out, and China brokers a peace deal, allowing Russia to keep occupied Ukrainian lands.
“I don’t have much faith in the optimistic scenario,” he said, adding that instead Ukraine could partially succeed in a highly anticipated counteroffensive, pushing Russian troops closer to the borders that existed before hostilities began in 2014. They could also attack Crimea and continue pressing on in the east, armed with more Western weapons, he said.
“Most likely this scenario will not be good for us,” Prigozhin said. “So we need to prepare for a difficult war.”
Washington Post