Update on Civil War in Russia

Who is the Wagner group and what exactly is going on?

The Wagner Group is a private military company under the control of Yevgeny Prigozhin that cut its teeth in deployments to Crimea and eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014 and has since dispatched troops to several conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, including the Syrian Civil War.

In Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Wagner has proved indispensable, but an apparent power struggle between the Kremlin and the outspoken Mr Prigozhin has led to the group having its wings clipped by Moscow.

The friction escalated to a crisis point on Friday, 23 June, when Mr Prigozhin accused his country’s defence ministry, Sergei Shoigu, of “destroying” his fighters and concocting lies to justify the invasion of Ukraine. Mr Prigozhin called for armed mutiny in an explosive rant on Telegram in which he vowed to stop the “evil” of the Kremlin’s top brass.

The Wagner Group’s leader did not go after Putin in his tirade, instead alleging that for more than a year and over 350,000 casualties into the war — a large part of which Mr Prigozhin’s group is responsible for — the Russian president had been deceived by Mr Shoigu.

“The war was needed ... so that Shoigu could become a Marshal, so that he could get a second Hero Star… the war wasn’t for demilitarising or de-Nazifying Ukraine. It was needed for an extra star,” Mr Prigozhin said on Telegram.

Moscow’s Interfax news agency reported that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Mr Putin has been briefed on the matter. The Kremlin’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has opened a criminal action against Mr Prigozhin and asked him to “stop illegal actions,” according to the Tass news agency.

The defence ministry has issued a denial of the accusations, calling them “an informational provocation”

The warnings made by the Kremlin have not hindered Mr Prigozhin’s threats. In a new Telegram message, he warned that his forces had crossed the border from Ukraine and were ready “to destroy anyone who stood in their way” as they entered the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.

(independent UK)