The leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has said that the Russian regular army had launched a missile strike on the Wagnerites’ rear camps. Prigozhin has added that Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu has now cowardly fled Rostov and “this creature will be stopped”. The Russian Ministry of Defence called this statement a provocation.
Source: Prigozhin’s press service on Telegram; RIA Novosti, a Kremlin-aligned Russian news outlet
Details: Prigozhin said that the attack was carried out by the Russian Armed Forces: “The information from the field suggests that the attack was carried out from the rear, i.e., by the [forces of the] Russian Defence Ministry. These scums carried out missile attacks on our rear camps. A large number of our fighters were killed. We will decide how to respond to this atrocity. The next step is up to us.”
According to the leader of the Wagnerites, “Those who struck the rear camps of the private military company will be punished”.
Quote: “I ask everyone not to resist. Anyone who tries to resist will be destroyed. Including any checkpoints on our way. I ask everyone to stay calm, not to succumb to provocations, and to stay in their homes. Preferably, do not go outside along our route. Justice in the army will be restored, and then justice in the whole of Russia…
Shoigu has just cowardly fled Rostov. At 21:00, as cowardly as a woman. This creature will be stopped…
There are 25,000 of us, and we are going to sort this out, why there is lawlessness in the country. 25,000 are expected as a tactical reserve, and the strategic reserve is the entire army and the entire country. Anyone who wants to join, do so. We need to put an end to this outrage.
Details: Prigozhin then claimed that Shoigu had personally arrived in Rostov to carry out an operation to wipe out the Wagnerites: “He used artillery and helicopters after dark to take us out.”
Meanwhile, the Russian MoD claims that all the messages and videos spread on social media on behalf of Prigozhin about “the Russian MoD striking the ‘rear camps’ of the Wagner Group” are untrue and are an information provocation.
The MoD of the aggressor country states that the Russian Armed Forces “continue to perform combat missions on the contact line against the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the area of the special military operation [as the Russian propaganda calls the war against Ukraine – ed.]”.
