Yevgeny Prigozhin, standing in the darkness next to a row of bloodied dead bodies, was shouting obscenities. With his yellowish, unnaturally hairless face contorted in primordial hatred, there was something about his appearance that seemed decidedly horrific.
Prigozhin may well be positioning himself for Putin’s likely downfall and the eventual (and probably very nasty) succession struggle
The look goes with his reputation. The head of the notorious Wagner (which cut its teeth as a mercenary force in Africa and the Middle East), Prigozhin is known for his untamed brutality and deep cynicism, and for his ability and willingness to get his hands dirty, or bloody. Perhaps that was why he volunteered to use his mercenaries – many of whom were recruited straight out of Russia’s prisons – for what he called the ‘Bakhmut meatgrinder’, the months-long assault on the Ukrainian town where thousands have been killed in intense urban warfare.
Now, Prigozhin claimed, the Russian Ministry of Defence was denying him the ammo he badly needed. So he called them out, trashing defence minister Sergey Shoigu and the Chief of General Staff Valerii Gerasimov, calling them ‘bitches’, and accusing them of inaction in the face of an unfolding disaster at Bakhmut. Prigozhin also promised to abandon the assault and surrender the town, now mostly under Russian control, to the Ukrainians.
The scene was so macabre, the attack on Shoigu and Gerasimov so vicious, that it even inspired internet memes. It also exposed deep fissures at the very heart of the Russian military effort.
In the days that followed, Prigozhin doubled down on his accusations against the military top brass, with a remarkable video posted on May 9, Russia’s Victory Day, in which he again complained that he had not received the ammo he had asked for. In the video Prigozhin referred to someone he called ‘a happy grandpa’.
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