"I think now Ukraine has a very good window of opportunity to do something," Mr Goncharenko said. The sight of Wagner mercenaries – many of them convicts who brought carnage to Ukraine – turning on Putin's own military was a welcome boost for morale among Ukrainian forces, according to the MP.Īnd while the infighting may not have affected the tempo of Russian operations on the ground, it pointed to divisions within the ranks – and new opportunities for Ukraine. "So, something tells me that what happened yesterday is probably just the beginning of a larger self-destruction of this empire of evil, and of course what makes Russia weaker, makes us stronger and brings our victory closer."
Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the Ukrainian defence minister, said: "We were always saying that Russia as an empire built on lies will sooner or later implode.
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In a series of audio and video messages posted on social media, he went further, implicitly attacking Putin for the first time, by accusing Moscow of lying about their justification for the entire Ukraine war. The Wagner chief accused them of incompetence over the war effort and claimed their soldiers had killed his men in Ukraine even though they were meant to be on the same side. Prigozhin's outburst was the climax of a long-running feud with Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, and General Valery Gerasimov, the head of the armed forces. Yet it still "shows how fragile Russia is and at any moment it could collapse, so yes, I think that this makes us closer to our victory". However, with the coup now over, "there will be no big changes on the battlefield in the very short term", said Oleksiy Goncharenko. Had the mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner private army lasted more than one day it may even have forced Putin to abandon his war in Ukraine to battle an insurrection at home, according to one senior Ukrainian MP. They noted that the rebellion itself, by the head of a mercenary group, was actually a by-product of President Vladimir Putin’s bungled decision to invade in the first place - the ultimate unintended consequence of an operation that was meant to make him stronger. It also remains unclear if Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu is set to be demoted or fired as Prigozhin demanded after a video of him visiting troops was released this morning.īy security and defence editor Deborah HaynesĪ sudden uprising in Russia was over too fast to have any immediate impact on the war in Ukraine, but it exposed a fragility in Moscow that Kyiv will seek to exploit, experts have said. However, there has been no comment from Prigozhin over the suggestion. The Kremlin said under the deal that Prigozhin would head to Belarus in exchange for a pardon from charges of treason.
The Wagner leader called off his troops after striking a deal with the Kremlin brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. The report offers an insight into the mystery of why Prigozhin called off his mutinous march on Moscow on Saturday just hours before reaching the city. It has also been assessed that the mercenary force had 8,000 fighters rather than the 25,000 claimed, and would have likely failed to take the Russian capital, the news outlet reported. Families of Wagner leaders were threatened by Russian intelligence services before Yevgeny Prigozhin called on his advance on Moscow, UK security sources have told The Telegraph.
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