“Everything is good on TV. On the ground will be the Ukrainian offensive,” Yevgeniy Prigozhin said Tuesday, in another caustic video message released just after Russia concluded a relatively subdued Victory Day celebration.
Prigozhin, chief of Vladimir Putin’s private army, the Wagner Group, is engaged in two wars: One real, with Ukraine, for the contested city of Bakhmut and another verbal, with the Russian Defense Ministry, which he contends is inept.
Prigozhin managed to become a trending topic last week when he threatened to pull his motley crew of mercenaries out of the fight for Bakhmut citing an ammo shortage he blamed on Russia’s top military brass. The Defense Ministry has denied Prigozhin’s claims, generally without naming him. According to leaked US intelligence, the Kremlin struggled this year to develop a coherent strategy for countering Prigozhin’s increasingly shrill rhetoric.
On Tuesday, he suggested today’s Russians aren’t worthy of their grandfathers’ triumph over the Third Reich. “We do not deserve a millimeter of this,” he chided. It was a grating assessment. Victory Day has morphed into an almost religious celebration under Putin, who typically stages a grand spectacle to mark the occasion.
This year, the pomp and festivities were comparatively modest. Just four-dozen vehicles participated in the parade, nothing like the 200-piece extravaganzas from previous years. There were no modern tanks — just one lonely T-34. In a short speech delivered a week after what the Kremlin claimed was an assassination attempt, Putin likened the West to the Nazis. Again.
“A real war has once again been waged against our Motherland,” he claimed, railing against “Western globalists and elites.” Among other things, Putin accused the West of “splitting society, provoking bloody conflicts, sowing Russophobia and destroying traditional family values that make a person a person.”
He blamed Ukraine’s plight on the US, and told legions of Russian conscripts (young men he cynically condemned to senseless deaths) that the “security of [Russia] rests on you today.” “The future of our statehood and our people depends on you,” he pressed.
Outside of Moscow, celebrations were slimmed down or canceled altogether as local officials fretted over the prospect of drone attacks. Some suggested celebratory fireworks might be psychologically damaging for soldiers home from the front lines. Traditional marches featuring pictures of World War II veterans were likewise canceled.
Hours before Putin’s speech in the Red Square, Russia fired a volley of missiles at Ukraine in May’s fifth major bombardment. Ukraine intercepted nearly all of the projectiles.
“Today, civilization is at a critical juncture,” Putin told his country. “For Russia, there are no unfriendly, hostile peoples either in the West or in the East. Like the vast majority of people on the planet, we want to see a future of peace, freedom and stability.”
Minutes later, Prigozhin painted a different picture. “Our soldiers are getting killed and the happy grandpa thinks he’s doing well,” he said, before wondering, “What will our country do — what will our children [and] grandchildren do — if it turns out the grandpa is a complete jackass?”
Subterfuge aside, Prigozhin may be putting China in a bind.
Did I read the last Prigozhin’s comment right? It seems to me he’s suggesting Putin is the grandpa in this metaphor? We knew he had personal ambitions in a post Putin Russia but this is blatant… and not waiting for Putin to snuff it…
And the UK is getting ready to send Ukraine long range missiles.