May 5, 2023
- Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin went ballistic on the Kremlin in an expletive-laden video on Thursday.
- He lashed out at Russia’s defense minister and a top general, blaming them for a lack of ammo.
- Prigozhin called the pair “animals,” saying they were responsible for the deaths of his men.
Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin on Thursday released a video of him screaming and cursing at the Kremlin’s two top officials.
His latest video, published on his press service’s Telegram channel, contains the military contractor’s harshest public comments about Russia’s leaders since the war began.
“Here are the guys from PMC Wagner who died today. The blood is still fresh,” Prigozhin says in the video, seen by Insider.
“Film them all,” he tells a cameraman, who pans over a grassy clearing filled with rows of corpses dressed in combat fatigues.
Prigozhin then launches into an expletive-filled tirade against Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, who Putin tasked with running the war in Ukraine.
He swore at least nine times in the video, though his press service censored the expletives.
“We have a 70% ammo shortage! Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where the [beep] is the ammo?” Prigozhin yells in the video.
He shouted that military leaders who wouldn’t give his troops ammunition would “have their insides eaten in hell.”
“You animals are hanging out in expensive clubs,” an outraged Prigozhin continued. “Your children are enjoying their lives, making videos for YouTube. Do you think that you are the masters of this life and that you have the right to control their lives?”
Prigozhin claimed that the death toll among his troops would have been five times lower had they been supplied with enough ammunition.
“They came here as volunteers,” he said, referring to the dead men in the video. “And are dying for you to be rolling in clover in your mahogany offices. Keep that in mind!”
Normally seen as a close ally of Putin, Prigozhin is now repeatedly complaining that his troops are running out of supplies, and accused Russia’s top brass of cutting him off and dooming his men in Ukraine.
He said his forces only receive a fifth of the shells they need every day, and that the shortage is costing his men their lives.
On Saturday, Prigozhin said his troops in Bakhmut would either have to “withdraw or die” given the massive ammunition deficit. He later added that his organization had lost more than 100 people in a single day during an assault there.
The fighting has been brutal in the eastern Ukrainian region. Wagner’s ground troops, led by Prigozhin, are one of Russia’s main forces deployed there. Both Kyiv and Moscow have lost thousands of men in Bakhmut over the last few months, per Western estimates.
In 2022, the Wagner Group drew scandal for recruiting Russian convicts to fight in Ukraine, promising the prisoners their freedom. Over 40,000 former convicts joined Wagner by July 2022, according to US officials.
Most Wagner soldiers have been ill-equipped and poorly trained, and have died in the fighting, per The New York Times.
The mercenary group stopped recruiting prisoners in February as it realized that convicts were starting to see its offer as a death sentence and refused to sign up, according to local media.
Russia’s defense ministry press service did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
Let’s face it, this ghoul is only pissed about being a failure, not about the lives of his slaves. At any rate, all this ranting and name-calling, and threats are useless. I want to see these evil creatures at each other’s throats.
Yeah, that Nazi needs to make up his mind if he wants dead ruzzians or not. One day he celebrates the cemetery is getting bigger and bigger and could end up a national park, then the next day he complains Ukraine is kicking his ass so he blames Putin’s military stooges.
According to the BBC, Prigozhin said he will pull out on May 10. What a fucking ramshackle army. Could you imagine what would happen to any guy who refused to fight in the US military? He would face a court martial in an instance.
Yeah, but the US would never use such a ragtag gang of filthy criminal thugs in any war. We have real soldiers, well-trained and with honor.
I’m tired of lots of important media taking the story of Moscow to construct daily reality in their live. What has happened these last few days?
History of Kremlin drone, raging Orc etc. All of this is front page web media all day, all of this is superimposed on the killing of civilians. What is important in this life, in this cruel war, with this genocide? The moods of these Muscovite butchers, or the death of children and so many innocent people?
Look at the big picture, from May 1. every hour a missile, a drone falls on Ukraine and kills! Every hour! But all this is completely relegated behind the plaintive cries of Moscow, and Prigozin. Literally absorbed. Whatever the nature of the information, in a war, the most important thing is that you have the microphone to distill, sometimes, your propaganda. All nazi orcs channels can mix, with “high frequency”, facts and their shitty propaganda. Twitter is actually going crazy with bot attacks that relegate certain information behind Moscow propaganda to make sure that their words resonate, reach an audience.
Economics sanctions, military actions, diplomatic isolation… Ok with this.
But now it’s time to make their words inaudible. Or to make a true journalistic work if the information is (really) important. Urgent!
Of course, your words are true and righteous. But, I’d be happy enough to see Ukraine getting everything it needs to send these evil creatures to hell. Every one of them.