Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin breaks silence, appears to taunt Putin over coup attempt: ‘We showed a master class’By Ronny Reyes and Caitlin Doornbos
June 26, 2023
Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin appeared to taunt Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday over the mercenaries’ seamless march toward Moscow — while claiming his men were betrayed by the Kremlin because he wanted to stop fighting in Ukraine.
Prigozhin broke his silence to try to justify the attempted weekend coup as he bragged about how easily his forces were able to make it within 120 miles of Moscow, saying Russia’s army could have taken lessons from them during the start of its Ukraine invasion.
“We showed a master class [in] how it should have looked like on February 24, 2022,” Prigozhin said in the 11-minute audio recording, noting that he covered the same distance in 24 hours that Russia sought in Ukraine.
“Therefore, if the actions of the 24 of February… were carried out by units according to the level of training in terms of the level of moral composure and readiness to perform tasks like the Wagner Group, then perhaps the special operation would last a day,” he said.
Prigozhin, who experts have called a “dead man walking” for the uprising, claimed that his short-lived weekend march was a necessary protest after he faced retaliation for wanting to pull out of the war by June 30.
* * *
Source:
https://nypost.com/2023/06/26/wagner-chief-yevgeny-prigozhin-breaks-silence-to-claim-attempted-russian-coup-was-just-a-protest/
