A protracted crisis between Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman and founder of the Wagner paramilitary group, and the Russian Defense Ministry has reached its climax and literally resulted in the most serious crisis for the authorities in the history of modern Russia.
Entry of mercenary units in the center of Rostov-on-Don, the control of a number of military facilities in the Rostov and Voronezh regions, and the desire to move towards Ryazan, Tambov, and even Moscow, have all threatened the stability of Russia.
Needless to say, the Kremlin's foreign policy projects in Africa, which previously relied only on informal ties of the Wagner group with local leaders, are now in fading into oblivion. It is no coincidence that President Vladimir Putin, in a TV address to the Russians, compared the current mercenary revolt to the events of 1917, that is, to the October Revolution in Russia.
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Chronology of the ‘Justice March’
On the evening of June 23, Prigozhin accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov of another attempt to destroy the Wagner PMC.
Prigozhin said the Ministry of Defense made the first attempt to destroy the group by not providing them with cover and leaving them under fire of American artillery and aviation, this time Shoigu and Gerasimov gave orders to their own artillery and aviation to bombard the positions of mercenaries in the rear camps. Prigozhin said that Wagner's fighters must stop ‘the evil of the country's military leadership’.
At first, the situation did not seem too serious and even looked like a play designed to attract the attention of Putin.
In recent months, Russian society has become accustomed to Prigozhin's constant criticism of the country's military leadership, and some of his statements have turned into memes.
On the afternoon of June 23, Prigozhin's press service published another interview with his boss, in which he also criticized Shoigu and Gerasimov, accusing the former of starting a war in an attempt to obtain the rank of marshal, the latter of alcoholism and inability to plan military operations, and both of them of misleading Putin.
Some experts, even after the Federal Security Service promptly opened a criminal case under the ‘Armed Rebellion’ article a few hours after Prigozhin's threats to start a "march of justice," still doubted the seriousness of what was happening. Some continued to insist that all of this was an attempt to lull the vigilance of Ukrainian troops trying to continue their counterattack in order to re-engage Wagner PMC in the fighting in Ukraine, which regrouped after the battles for Bakhmut.
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Especially since the video published by accounts close to the Wagner PMC, allegedly with the consequences of the strike on the mercenaries' camp looked frankly staged. And Prigozhin initially made all his menacing statements through voice messages in a telegram channel, and according to the metadata, recorded in advance. But most importantly, there were no intelligible photos and video evidence of the mercenary columns' movement inside Russian territory.