- Wagner chief vows to topple Russian military leadership
- We will defend our country from internal treason – Putin
- Evgeny Prigozhin’s attempted coup is a “stab in the back” amid the Ukraine conflict, the Russian president has said
MOSCOW (Agencies): Evgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group private military company, has been accused by the government of staging an armed insurrection.
The charges were brought late Friday night after Prigozhin accused Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, the chair of the Russian general staff, of serious crimes.
Prigozhin claimed to have ordered troops loyal to him to move towards Rostov-on-Don, a major city in southern Russia. Security measures were also reportedly beefed up in Moscow.
“We are going onwards and we will go to the end,” Yevgeny Prigozhin, 62, said in an audio message.
“We will destroy everything that stands in our way,” he added in the most audacious challenge to President Vladimir Putin since the start of the offensive in Ukraine last year.
He later claimed his forces had shot down a Russian military helicopter.
The attempted insurrection by the chief of the Wagner private military company, Evgeny Prigozhin, amounts to a betrayal of Russia and its people, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an address to the nation on Saturday morning. He also vowed that the country’s law enforcement agencies will take decisive actions to restore order.
In a televised speech, Putin appealed to Russian service members and those “who have been drawn into this criminal gamble by deceit or threats,” without naming Prigozhin in particular.
He noted that Moscow is engaged in a historic struggle to safeguard its future while “repelling aggression from neo-Nazis and their masters” in the West.
“We are fighting for the lives and safety of our people, for our sovereignty and independence. For the right to be and remain Russia,” the president said, urging fellow citizens to join forces and put aside all the divisions that could be exploited by foreign adversaries.