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Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed early Saturday to have taken control of the strategic southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don without a fight, as Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to “neutralize” the threat posed by the renegade Wagner mercenary army.
It escalates the stakes in an uprising by Prigozhin’s Wagner group against the military leadership in Moscow and its 16-month-old war on Ukraine.
“We are at the staff headquarters, it’s 7:30 in the morning,” Prigozhin said in a video statement posted in his Telegram channel. “Military objects in Rostov are under control, including the aerodrome.”
According to reports and social media, Wagner forces met little resistance as they traveled the short distance from the Ukrainian border to Rostov, the operational center for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The thrust transformed Prigozhin’s increasingly furious tirades of the past 24 hours against the Kremlin into stark action that exposed the vulnerability of the Russian rear.
“The chief of staff ran away as soon as he found out that we were approaching the building,” said Prigozhin, referring to Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, who was reported to have been in Rostov-on-Don recently.
Putin, in a five-and-a-half-minute address to the nation Saturday morning, denounced the uprising as “a stab in the back of our nation and our people.” Without naming Prigozhin, he said: “We are dealing with treason.”
The Russian president added: “Everyone who deliberately took the path of betrayal, who prepared an armed rebellion, took the path of rebellion and terrorist methods will suffer inevitable punishment, will answer before the law and before our people.”
Putin acknowledged that the “situation remains difficult” in Rostov-on-Don.
Prigozhin, in his address, said the staff headquarters in Rostov was working normally. “Everything we did and took control over was so that offensive aviation does not strike us, but strikes the Ukrainians,” he said. The 1:43-minute video statement was shot in the corner of a rain-soaked courtyard as armed troops milled around in the background.
According to military bloggers and to Prigozhin himself, Wagner troops shot down one MI-35 helicopter. Videos posted on social media overnight had shown choppers hovering over Rostov.
Appealing directly to the Russian army and people, Prigozhin said the Kremlin had lied to them over the toll of the war. A huge amount of territory has been lost, he said. Three to four times as many men were being killed than was reported to the top; and losses — killed, missing, wounded and unable to fight due to a lack of ammunition or leadership — reached 1,000 on some days, he said.
Overnight, Prigozhin had said in a series of short voice messages posted to social media that he was leading a “march of justice” and not a military coup, and suggested that 25,000 of his men were en route to Moscow to oust Russia’s military leadership — and were ready to die for the cause.
Russia’s FSB spy service has opened a criminal investigation for organizing an armed insurrection, and according to state media, counterterrorism operations have been launched in Moscow, the surrounding region and Voronezh oblast, which lies around halfway along the 1,100-kilometer road from Rostov to the Russian capital.
