The leader of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigojine, intends to cash in on his supposed victory over the Ukrainian army at Soledar. In a video released late Saturday by his press service, the member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle praised the effectiveness of his troops in Ukraine, where they often rival those of the regular Russian army.
Yevgeny Prigozhin claims that his men are very experienced and “complete all their objectives independently” because they have their own planes, artillery pieces and armored vehicles. “The most important thing is the control system, which has been perfected perfectly. The Wagner group listens to everyone, everyone can have an opinion,” he said.
A criticism of the Russian military command?
But “after making a decision, all the missions are accomplished, no one can go back. It is the fiercest discipline that gives us this possibility,” he continued, dressed in a camouflage suit next to a man he introduces as the commander of Wagner. in the Battle of Soledar.
These comments by Yevgeny Prigojine appear as a new veiled criticism of the Russian military high command, accused, even by some supporters of Vladimir Putin, of a lack of coordination and distance from the realities on the ground.
In recent months, Yevgeny Prigojine has repeatedly criticized Russian troop commanders, especially during Ukraine’s military successes this fall in the Kharkhiv (east) and Kherson (south) regions.
On Friday, the Russian army announced the capture of Soledar without initially mentioning Wagner’s fighters. Evgeny Prigokhine, through his press service, then lamented the “permanent attempts to steal victories” from his group. On rare occasions, the Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement praising the “courage” and role played by Wagner’s men at Soledar.
The Wagner Group, founded in 2014, has recruited thousands of inmates to fight in Ukraine in exchange for sentence reductions. In a sign of a rise in power, Evgeny Prigokhine, 61, admitted in September that he had founded Wagner after years of denial. He now regularly travels to the Ukrainian front and actively expresses himself through his press service.
Source: BFM TV
