The chief of the private contractor Wagner Group said his fighters crossed into Russia’s territory as Moscow calls for the surrender of his forces and ultimately his arrest.
Yevgeny Prigozhin called for an armed rebellion on Friday to remove Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu from power. The push follows the Wagner chief’s accusations that the Russian military attacked his group’s campsite and killed many of his fighters.
Prigozhin claimed on Saturday local time that Wagner forces left Ukraine where they had been fighting and went into Russian territory, reaching the town of Rostov. He vowed in a series of social media posts on Friday that his soldiers would “destroy anyone who stands in our way.”
“We are moving forward and will go until the end,” he said.
Wagner has been assisting the Russian military in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and was key to Russia capturing the city of Bakhmut last month, but tensions have been rising between the groups as Russia has struggled to make gains for months and is trying to fight off a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Prigozhin denounced Russian justifications for the war as false, saying that Ukraine was not persecuting ethnic Russians in its territory or threatening them, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed. He also accused Russian oligarchs of being responsible for the war starting and said they were using the war to try to take resources from Ukraine.
He said they were “practically ruling” Russia now.
The Russian Defense Ministry denied Prigozhin’s claims, and Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee opened a criminal case against him on allegations that he was inciting an armed rebellion.
The Federal Security Services, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, charged him with armed rebellion and called for his arrest as Wagner forces moved forward.
Security was heightened in Moscow and Rostov-on-Don, where the Russian military headquarters for the southern region is located. The headquarters also oversees the war in Ukraine.
Prigozhin said Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff, sent warpWAGNER lanes to strike the Wagner Group’s convoys, but his forces took down a military helicopter that had fired at a civilian convoy.
Russian social networks have not yet confirmed Prigozhin’s claims that his forces entered Rostov.
The Wagner chief said Gerasimov met with Shoigu and decided to destroy Wagner. He has said he has 25,000 soldiers under his command and called on the Russian army to not resist.
“This is not a military coup, but a march of justice,” he said.
Specifically, Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC) opened a criminal case against Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, just hours after he accused Moscow of lying about the war in Ukraine.
The NAC opened the criminal case against Prigozhin on allegations that he incited an armed rebellion, according to Russian state-run outlet TASS. The counterterrorism body is calling for the head of the private military company to immediately halt illegal activities.
Russian military bloggers and other sources have also confirmed the opened case against Prigozhin based on his recent comments.
Earlier on Friday, Prigozhin released a video that went viral in which he directly countered the Kremlin’s narrative for launching the war in Ukraine — to denazify and demilitarize Kyiv, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused of persecuting ethnic Russians and of attempting to destroy Russia on behalf of the U.S. and other western leaders.
“The war was not needed to return our Russian citizens and not to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine,” Prigozhin said. “The war was needed by oligarchs. It was needed by the clan that is today practically ruling in Russia.”
He said Ukraine never planned to attack Russia, contrary to Putin’s comments, and claimed Russian elites tried to plunder resources from Ukraine. The Wagner chief also accused Russia of lying about the number of casualties in the war and said soldiers were fleeing in eastern Ukraine as Kyiv pushes forward with a counteroffensive.
Later on Friday, Prigozhin released another video claiming to show the aftermath of a Russian strike on a Wagner Group camp, which he said killed scores of his fighters.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has denied those claims, saying the allegations “do not correspond to reality and are an informational provocation.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin is aware of the situation unfolding around Prigozhin and that all necessary measures were being taken, according to TASS.
The long-running feud between Prigozhin and Russian elites took a quick and sharp turn on Friday after months of tensions.
Prigozhin has played a key role in the war in Ukraine since the spring of 2022 and last month his mercenary fighters helped take the city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
