Fight between Wagner leader and Russian Defense Ministry is ‘unprecedented’: State Department
Mike Brest
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The ongoing friction between Russia’s Ministry of Defense and the leader of the Wagner mercenary group is “unprecedented,” according to a top State Department official.
Russian defense leaders have butted heads with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group founder, in recent months as the soldiers under both have fought and lost thousands on the front lines of their war in Ukraine. Prigozhin has become more willing to criticize Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and the Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu publicly in recent months as his troops fought in the small salt mining town of Soledar and its larger city neighbor of Bakhmut.
WAGNER MERCENARY GROUP FOUNDER ACCUSES RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY OF ‘TREASON’
Earlier this week, he accused the top members of the Russian Defense Ministry of “treason” for allegedly providing his men with fewer resources than their own troops.
Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said the tension between them is “unprecedented” during a Thursday morning event with the Washington Post.
“The infighting is unprecedented within Putin’s rule, in terms of the way it’s spilled out into the public, with Prigozhin calling names and basically trying to get the Russian people’s loyalty for his faction and to undercut the Russian military while they are in a war [is] absolutely unprecedented,” she explained.
Prigozhin’s private army, which has brutally operated in several African nations in recent years, deployed roughly 50,000 personnel to Ukraine’s eastern region following the military’s initial significant battlefield losses. They have fought in the region for months amassing significant casualties, while the group’s leader has repeatedly and publicly questioned top ministry leaders.
The public nature of this dispute could indicate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “complete control over the various factions of power in the Russian state” may have “begun to fray.”
The Wagner leader alleged that his troops do not have the same supplies as Russian forces in a recording released on Tuesday by his press service on Telegram.
“The Chief of the General Staff [Valery Gerasimov] and the Minister of Defense [Sergei Shoigu] are handing out commands right and left, that the Wagner PMC should not receive ammunition, they are also not helping with air transport,” Prigozhin claimed. “Wagner PMCs do not have ammunition. Why do the rest of the units also have a constant shortage of ammunition? A handful of military functionaries decided that this is their country, their people, who decided that these people would die when it suits them.”
The Defense Ministry denied the claim, saying, “Attempts to split the close mechanism of interaction and support between the divisions of the Russian group are counterproductive and play only to the advantage of the enemy,” according to the Washington Post.
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Prigozhin’s troops in Ukraine include 10,000 contractors and another 40,000 convicts that had been in Russian prisons prior to joining the war as an opportunity to later gain their freedom, National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters last month.
The Biden administration also announced a slew of new sanctions against the Wagner Group and designated it as a “transnational criminal organization,” while there’s a bipartisan group of senators trying once again to pass a bill that would require the State Department to designate the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary group, as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).