Founder of the Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (right). Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images/Contributor
- Yevgeny Prigozhin, who heads the Mercenary Wagner group, appears to have turned against Vladimir Putin.
- Prigozhin’s ties to Putin date back to the 1990s when his catering companies served the Kremlin.
- On Thursday, Prigozhin vowed to withdraw troops from Ukraine, blaming Putin for their deaths.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group – formerly known as “Putin’s cook” because of his connections to the Russian President – has been offering his army to the Kremlin for years and most recently sacrificed it to the “meat grinder”. of the war in the city of Bakhmut in support of Vladimir Putin’s dreams of victory over Ukraine.
But his decades-long ally with the Russian leader could be coming to an end.
The Washington Post reported that leaked US intelligence documents, allegedly shared by National Guard aviator Jack Teixeira on a Discord server, revealed that the Russian military leadership struggled for months to respond to Prigozhin when he complained about the lack of ammunition for complained to his troops – and that Prigozhin personally asked Putin to intervene before posting a series of multiple smear videos criticizing the Kremlin.
“His tirades suggest his pleas have fallen on deaf ears,” the Post reported.
According to the documents, Russian Defense Ministry officials considered launching a smear campaign via a deputy to discredit Prigozhin, although it is unclear if such a campaign was launched.
In a series of videos posted to Telegram on Thursday, Prigozhin appears to have attacked Putin, accusing top military officials of cutting off him of ammunition and supplies and condemning his private army to death on the battlefield. Prigozhin has likened the ongoing battle for Bakhmut to a “meat grinder,” Insiders previously reported, with the mercenary leader acknowledging that his men were dying at an extremely high rate due to the shortage.
“We have a 70% ammo shortage! shoigu! Gerasimov! where to [beep] is the ammunition?” he said in an explicit, ranting video also posted to Telegram, saying that military leaders who would not give his troops ammunition “would have their guts eaten in hell”.
“You animals hang out in fancy clubs,” he continued. “Their children enjoy their lives and make videos for YouTube. Do you believe that you are the masters of this life and have the right to control their life?”
Prigozhin promised to withdraw his troops by May 10 from the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the site of one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the invasion.
Prigozhin’s relationship with Putin began in the 1990s after the business tycoon started a catering business that frequently served the Russian leader and the Kremlin, eventually earning him the nickname “Putin’s chef,” Insider previously reported. But Prigozhin’s skills weren’t limited to the culinary world: He also funded a so-called troll factory called the Internet Research Agency that tried to disrupt US elections, according to a 2018 Justice Department indictment.
In Putin, Prigozhin found a powerful ally – and the duo became close friends, with Prigozhin acting as an informal adviser to the Russian President and providing strategic advice to Putin on international strategy and eventually military operations.
When Prigozhin founded the Wagner Group in 2014, although the company wasn’t legally registered in the country, according to the Times, and mercenaries are illegal under Russian law, it became the de facto private military service for the Kremlin, which used soldiers during Russia’s annexation of Crimea as well as throughout Africa and the Middle East.
The couple’s relationship has been strained since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began last February, Insider previously reported, after the Wagner group made headlines and Prigozhin appeared to credit wartime victories over Russian military officials’ strategy.
While it remains unclear what effect Wagner’s withdrawal would have on the Ukrainian invasion, Prigozhin hinted in March that if his fighters failed to secure Bakhmut, Russia’s entire front line would collapse.
Representatives of the Pentagon and the government of the Russian Federation did not immediately respond to insiders’ requests for comment.
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