Because he did not commit the coup: Prigozhin was described by convicts as a “cowardly traitor”: “Prigozhin’s coup was a PR operation that will go down in history”

Yevgeny Prigozhin openly rebelled against the Russian government in the Kremlin this weekend. He even immediately attacked Vladimir Putin after accusing him of high treason. “The president is grossly mistaken,” Prigozhin said in response to a speech by his once-trusted superior – stopping in the so-called “March of Justice” with a convoy of his Wagner mercenaries heading for Moscow.

What happened next is not really clear. Prigozhin broke off the entire exercise 200 kilometers from the capital, the Wagner troops turned around and shortly afterwards also left the occupied southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.

The official version is that Prigozhin, mediated by the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko, decided to call off the coup. In return, he went unpunished and was able to travel to Belarus. Since then there has been no sign of life from Prigozchin.

Whatever really went on behind the scenes of Moscow’s complex power apparatus, some Russian army soldiers who wanted to support Prigozhin’s uprising are now accusing him of being a coward. This is because he did not follow through with the rebellion and allowed himself to be diverted from his plan.

In a video currently circulating online, a group of soldiers threaten Prigozhin, describing him as a “coward” and a “traitor”, as The Telegraph writes. The soldiers are said to be former convicts recruited for the so-called “Storm-Z Brigades” with the prospect of amnesty.

These troops report to the regular Russian army, but would have seen Prigozhin as an unofficial leader, as he deploys convicts himself and was once behind bars himself for robbery.

One of the soldiers indirectly accuses Prigozhin of losing his nerve. He betrayed them, the soldiers.

They should now fear reprisals from the Russian army. Then they go further and threaten their former leader:

What happened to the Wagner mercenary unit and other soldiers who were friendly to Prigozhin after his disappearance is unclear. Originally, the Wagner units were to be contractually placed under the Russian Ministry of Defense – probably one of the reasons Prigozhin decided to stage a coup.

Whether this is still the Kremlin’s plan has not yet been made public. However, according to Russian military bloggers, several decision-makers in Russia’s elite now view Wagner’s approximately 25,000 mercenaries as a threat to stability in the country.

You can read here how the unit could continue:

(con)