Has Yevgeny Prigozhin gone off the rails? Russian public television offers this new narrative of power to explain the mutiny of the leader of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner. According to them, Prigozhin was intoxicated by the billions of rubles of public money he received. “Prigozhin lost his mind over large sums of money,” said Dmitry Kissiliov, one of the main voices of the Kremlin media apparatus, on his weekly show.
“The feeling of believing everything is allowed began a long time ago, from [Wagner’s] operations in Syria and Africa,” he continues. According to him, this feeling was “strengthened” after the capture this year of the Ukrainian cities of Soledar and Bakhmout by his mercenaries. “He believed he could oppose both the Russian Ministry of Defense, the state and the president himself,” Dmitry Kissilov said.
To illustrate this supposed delusion of grandeur of Prigozhin, the presenter assured, without providing evidence, that the military company Wagner had received 858 billion rubles (8.8 billion euros) of public money. According to Kissilov, “one of the main factors” in the Wagner Group’s mutiny was the refusal of the Russian Ministry of Defense to extend lucrative contracts signed with Concord, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s restaurant group.
Wagner’s rebellion, carried out at the end of last week, shook Russian power in the midst of the conflict in Ukraine. For several hours, Wagner’s fighters occupied a Russian army headquarters in Rostov-on-Don (southwest) and drove several hundred kilometers towards Moscow. The mutiny ended on Saturday evening with an agreement providing for the departure for Belarus of Yevgueni Prigojine.
No sanction has been announced against the mutineers, but the future of Yevgueni Prigojine’s businesses seems uncertain. News sites close to his group were blocked this week in Russia. On Saturday, the group’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, the Wagner Center, announced on Telegram that it was moving, while ensuring that it would continue to operate under a “new format”.
Yevgueni Prigojine assured that his uprising was not intended to overthrow power, but to save Wagner from being dismantled by the Russian general staff, which he shamelessly accuses of incompetence in the conflict in Ukraine. Since last Monday, Mr. Prigozhin has not made a public statement.
On Sunday, Dmitry Kissiliov challenged the idea that Wagner’s fighters were the most effective of the Russian forces, saying it took them “two hundred and twenty-five days” to take Bakhmout, compared to “seventy days to the regular army to take Mariupol.
