In videos posted on social media early on Saturday, Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that he was at the headquarters of the Southern Military District (SMD) in Rostov and demanded that defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov come to the city, 1,000 kilometres south of Moscow. The videos could not be verified.
“We have arrived here, we want to receive the chief of the general staff and Shoigu,” Prigozhin said in one video, seated between two senior Russian generals. “Unless they come, we’ll be here, we’ll blockade the city of Rostov and head for Moscow.”
Unconfirmed reports and videos that they’ve taken Voronezh with no resistance. 500km from Moscow.
Edit:: update:
A Russian security source told Reuters on Saturday that Wagner Group mercenary fighters had taken control of all military facilities in the city of Voronezh, around 500 km (310 miles)south of Moscow.
Will probably fail, but likely won’t be the first uprising. And it’s not as if Russia has troops to spare either.
Pull too many troops from the front line? Ukraine will exploit it.
Pull too many troops from behind the front line? Increased desertion of troops on the front line.
Pull too many troops from another Russian region? Possibility of an uprising there.
I doubt there’s going to be an actual uprising. Prigozhin is a windbag: he never follows through. Remember when he was saying that Wagner would pull out of Bakhmut unless they get ammo 'n shit?
They didn’t get munitions, and they didn’t pull out.
wagner territorial gains in russia dramatically faster than in ukraine.
This still smells fishy, Russia never says the truth and Putin would never admit this so easily. Seems like some sort of exit strategy for Putin not to take the blame of a failed war. But let’s hope it’s true
Somebody’s getting a taste of what it could be like to become the leader of Russia or the Russian army… If this guy overthrows Putin and ends the war in Ukraine, it would be very interesting. He probably just wants to go on killing people in peace in some other country without getting interference from incompetent generals meddling in his operation. Putin messed that up.
