Loudmouth Prigozhin: Is the Kremlin Fighting Back Now? Experts sound the alarm: the limit of 1.5 degrees will soon be exceeded

Has Yevgeny Prigozhin taken too much risk? For months, the head of the Wagner mercenary unit has been firing live shots at the Russian military leadership and the Ministry of Defense for waging the war in Ukraine. At the beginning of May, he allowed the dispute to escalate further. In a video, he showed dead fighters near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, pointed to their corpses and shouted, “Shoigu! Gerasimov!”

Prigozhin repeats his criticism again and again: he accuses Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov of not supplying enough ammunition and of sacrificing the lives of the Wagner fighters. He announced that Wagner fighters would withdraw from Bachmut the day after the victory parade on 9 May. And he threatened that he was not afraid to take on the “bureaucrats”.

The “bureaucrats” are fighting back

That the Wagner mercenaries actually withdrew completely does not seem to be the case. Prigozhin himself announced that his fighters were gaining ground, and the Ukrainian side also continued to report Wagner’s presence. But observers also report that Wagner fighters have been drawn from the flanks. You can read more about the situation in Bachmut here.

But the “bureaucrats” seem to have taken his warning seriously: the Russian power circle apparently begins to openly attack Prigozhin. As the war monitors of the Institute of War Studies (ISW) report, Prigozhin is probably being pressured by some siloviki. “Siloviki” are people in Russian who have a lot of money and are close to power. Many of them come from the secret services and the army and have become rich in the circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Politicians apparently withdraw their support for Prigozhin

For example, allegations of Prigozhin’s political ambitions are circulating on Russian Telegram channels allegedly related to the presidential administration and the Ministry of Defense. He is accused of using the war in Ukraine and the Battle of Bakhmut to raise his political profile – not to serve Russian interests. Prigozhin himself said that this assessment of him was quite common in the presidential administration, as ISW further reports.

In addition, siloviki probably practice pressuring politicians and political officials to stop Prigozhin – apparently successfully. It is reported that the chairman of the Russian State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, no longer supports Prigozhin. And so Volodin is just one example.

Prigozhin has the trump card

In fact, the question arises of why Prigozhin can still act so freely at this time. Because this week it became known that the mercenary boss probably offered the Ukrainian leadership in January information about the positions of the Russian army. Condition: Ukraine must withdraw its soldiers from Bakhmut, where many Wagner mercenaries were fighting at the time, as the Washington Post reported. Ukraine apparently refused because they did not trust Prigozhin. Prigozhin and the Kremlin rejected the report.

As ISW experts reported Monday, the Kremlin likely knew about Prigozhin’s alleged communications with Ukraine before the Washington Post’s report. But Prigozhin has one trump card up his sleeve: his troops in Ukraine. As the battle of Bakhmut in particular shows, Russia is currently dependent on the mercenaries.

As long as this applies, the Kremlin will not threaten Prigozhin, the ISW reports. However, it is likely that steps will be taken to discredit Prigozhin as a traitor.

(t-online, cck)