Yevgeny Prigozhin -v- Putin.
Yevgeny Prigozhin is the head of the Mercenary group, Wagner, that is fighting Ukraine on behalf of Russia.
Prigozhin feels that the Russian President is being deceived by the Russian Defence Minister.
Prigozhin made these statements in a video clip, released on Telegram by his press service, on Friday, 23 June 2023.
“The defence ministry is trying to deceive society and the president and tell us a story about how there was crazy aggression from Ukraine and that they were planning to attack us with the whole of NATO.”
“The special operation was started for different reasons“.
“The war wasn’t needed to demilitarise or denazify Ukraine.”
Saturday, 24 June 2023.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, who had known Prigozhin personally for about 20 years, negotiated with the mercenary boss, after discussing the issue with Putin, to stop Wagner’s troop movements on Moscow.
Under the agreement, Prigozhin will take exile in Belarus, and not face any prosecution from Putin.
Prigozhin agreed to that, to avoid “shedding Russian blood“. His men were just 200km (120 miles) from the Russian capital on Saturday, 24 June 2023, when he decided to turn them back to prevent killings.
Putin himself wanted to “avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results“.
Prigozhin had been demanding that Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Defence Minister, be removed from his position.
Will Sergei Shoigu be sacked, or demoted in some way?
One news headline seems to think so.
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