Yevgeny Prigozhin: Humiliation for Vladimir Putin as Wagner boss goes into public meltdown

Yevgeny Prigozhin has flooded his Telegram channel and other accounts with outrageous and provocative statements that appeared to take shots at the Russian president.

He revealed a humiliating problem for Russia — that Russians had “fled” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

“The situation on the western flanks is developing according to the worst of the predicted scenarios,” Prigozhin said in an audio message released Thursday. “Those territories that were liberated with the blood and lives of our comrades … are abandoned today almost without any fight by those who are supposed to hold our flanks.”

Earlier in the week, Prigozhin marred Russia’s May 9 Victory Day celebrations with public and foul-mouthed criticisms of the country’s top military officials.

“Today they [Ukrainians] are tearing up the flanks in the Artemovsk [Bakhmut] direction, regrouping at Zaporizhzhia. And a counteroffensive is about to begin,” he said Tuesday. “Victory Day is the victory of our grandfathers. We haven’t earned that victory one millimetre.”

Russia’s defence ministry, however, refuted Prigozhin’s claims late Thursday, saying reports of breakthroughs around Bakhmut “do not correspond to reality”.

Prigozhin is involved in a long-running dispute with Russian military chiefs over ammunition supplies for his fighters, whom he has threatened to pull out of Bakhmut.

He also made a cryptic comment that raised eyebrows on social media — saying Russia’s uniformed military was starving his troops of shells.

“The shells are lying in warehouses, they are resting there,” he said.

“Why are the shells lying in the warehouses? There are people who fight, and there are people who have learned once in their lives that there must be a reserve, and they save, save, save those reserves.

“No one knows what for. Instead of spending a shell to kill the enemy, they kill our soldiers. And happy grandfather thinks this is okay.”

That begged the question: Whom, exactly, is Prigozhin referring to? After all, “grandfather in the bunker” is one of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s favourite monikers for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who inhabits an almost cartoonishly extreme security bubble.

Experts on the matter say Prigozhin is skirting the line with Putin, especially at a time when open critics of the Russian establishment are being detained in droves.

However, in a recent analysis, the Institute for the Study of War said Prigozhin’s comments could open a floodgate of bad sentiment towards Putin.

“If the Kremlin does not respond to Prigozhin’s escalating attacks on Putin it may further erode the norm in Putin’s system in which individual actors can jockey for position and influence (and drop in and out of Putin’s favour) but cannot directly criticise Putin,” the institute posted to Twitter.

It came after President Volodymyr Zelensky declared Ukraine needed more time before beginning a highly anticipated counteroffensive against Russian forces, as the UK prepares to send Storm Shadow missiles to help Kyiv.

Britain’s decision will make it the first country to provide longer-range missiles to Kyiv, which has been training a new contingent of forces and stockpiling Western-supplied munitions and hardware.

Analysts say these steps will be key to reclaiming territory captured by Russia, although the timing of the counteroffensive remains a question.

“Mentally we’re ready…,” Zelensky said in an interview with the BBC published Thursday. “In terms of equipment, not everything has arrived yet.

“With (what we have) we can go forward and be successful. But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time,” he said.

But the head of Russia’s Wagner private military company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, accused Zelensky of being “dishonest” in the interview.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive “is in full swing”, Prigozhin said. Kyiv has spent months preparing to claw back ground in the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the south.

Africa spat erupts

Separately on Thursday, the US envoy to South Africa accused the country of having covertly provided arms to Russia, despite its professed neutrality in the Ukraine war.

Ambassador Reuben Brigety said the United States was “confident” weapons and ammunition had been loaded onto a Russian freighter that docked at a Cape Town naval base in December.

“The arming of the Russians is extremely serious, and we do not consider this issue to be resolved, and we would like SA to (start) practising its non-alignment policy,” Brigety was quoted as saying.

South Africa hit back against the charge, with presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya calling the envoy’s statement “a counter-productive public posture” undermining “the spirit of cooperation” between the countries.

“While no evidence has been provided to date to support these allegations, the government has undertaken to institute an independent enquiry to be led by a retired judge,” Magwenya added.

Western Arms

The Storm Shadow missiles pledged by the UK have been used by British and French forces in the Gulf, Iraq and Libya and can be operated in extreme conditions.

“The donation of these weapons systems gives Ukraine the best chance to defend themselves against Russia’s continued brutality,” UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said.

His Ukrainian counterpart Oleksiy Reznikov said last month that Kyiv’s preparations were “coming to an end” and his forces were ready “in a global sense”.

But he also said that Abrams tanks promised by the United States would not be able to take part in the offensive because they would not arrive in Ukraine until the end of this year.

Ukraine has, however, received hundreds of other tanks, aircraft, munitions and other arms from its Western allies.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion, Kyiv has received more than $150 billion in aid, including $65 billion in military assistance, according to a count by the German defence ministry.

Ukraine is counting on the success of its planned counteroffensive, as that could determine how much aid the West will be willing to donate in the future.

‘Frozen conflict’

Some voices are calling for peace talks with Russia, but in the BBC interview Zelensky rejected the possibility of land concessions.

“Why should any country of the world give (Russian President Vladimir) Putin its territory?” he said.

Russia was “counting on” a “frozen conflict”, he warned.

But Western sanctions are having an effect on Russia’s defence industry, he stressed. “We already see that they’ve reduced shelling per day in some areas.”

— with AFP