The head of the Wagner mercenary force has said that 20,000 of its fighters have been killed in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, and warned that Russia could face another revolution if its leadership does not improve its handling of the war.
Yevgeny Prigozhin said 20% of the 50,000 convicts Wagner had recruited, and a similar number of its regular troops, had been killed over several months in the fight for Bakhmut.
Prigozhin pointed to the social disparity underlined by the war, with the sons of the poor being sent back from the front in zinc coffins while the children of the elite “shook their arses” in the sun.
“This divide can end as in 1917 with a revolution,” he said in an interview posted on his channel on the Telegram messaging app. “First the soldiers will stand up, and after that – their loved ones will rise up. There are already tens of thousands of them – relatives of those killed. And there will probably be hundreds of thousands – we cannot avoid that.”
Prigozhin is known as “Putin’s chef” because he once provided catering services to the Russian leader, but he said that “Putin’s butcher” would be a more fitting nickname. He claimed his men now controlled all of Bakhmut – a claim disputed by the Kyiv government, which insists its forces still have a foothold in the ruined Donbas city – but he warned that Wagner would pull out at the beginning of next month.
Prigozhin was speaking after two Russian rebel militias, the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion, had made a dramatic incursion into the Belgorod region along Ukraine’s northern border, crossing into Russia with apparent ease, although the Wagner boss did not refer directly to the raid.
The Russian defence ministry claimed to have routed the raiding force, killing 70, but the militia leaders said they had only suffered two deaths. After withdrawing from Belgorod, Denis Kapustin, a commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps, told reporters on the Ukrainian side of the border that the raid had demonstrated the fragility of Russia’s defences.
“We can see that the military command as well as the political establishments of the Russian Federation are not ready for this situation,” Kapustin said. “They have invested billions in strengthening their line but when it comes to action, everything falls apart and nothing is working.”
Kapustin said the rebel fighters had finally withdrawn after two days once Russia was able to deploy tanks, but they would strike again across the border.
“I think you will see us again on that side,” said Kapustin, who introduced himself by his call-sign White Rex and is known for his far-right views. “I cannot reveal those upcoming things, I cannot even reveal the direction. The … border is pretty long. Yet again there will be a spot where things will get hot.”
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, denied Kyiv’s involvement in the incursion, but said it showed that Moscow was not ready for the internal challenges it was about to face.
“We as an official state have nothing to do with these events,” Danilov said. “These are Russian citizens that are doing this as a means to express their attitude towards what is going on in Russia.”
Military observers have said, however, it is highly unlikely that the Russian militias, which include far-right elements, could move men and machines across Ukraine and over the border without the acquiescence of Ukrainian military intelligence.
Danilov spelled out the lessons Kyiv had learned about the Russian authorities from the incursion.
“This demonstrates to us that they are not ready for the challenges that are to come, not just in the Belgorod oblast but in any territorial unit of Russia,” he said, suggesting the potential for further uprisings by Russian rebel groups.
“The capacity and strengths of the Russian chain of command will not be enough. The system has stopped working,” Danilov said. “The FSB [Federal Security Service] is supposed to be controlling the border. The question arises: where is the FSB?”
He also said that despite the unprecedented incursion on Russian territory, “Putin has yet to say a single word about it”.
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There were reports that the rebel militias had used US military vehicles to cross into Belgorod, which the Kremlin pointed to as evidence of heavy western involvement. Danilov denied the Ukrainian government had supplied any equipment.
Kapustin suggested it was equipment that had been captured by Russian forces and then bought by the rebels on the black market.
“I know exactly where I got my weapons from. Unfortunately, not from the western partners,” he said.
In Washington, John Kirby, the spokesperson for the National Security Council, said the US was looking into the reports of US equipment, adding that the US had made it clear to Kyiv it did not support the use of US-made equipment for attacks inside Russia.
Ilya Ponomarev, a Russian dissident based in Ukraine who claims to lead the political wing of the Freedom of Russia Legion, said the incursion had three aims: to declare a corner of the country as “free Russia”, to send a signal across Russia that the rebel movement was real and effective, and to divert Russian troops from the frontline to guard the border.
“There are 800-something kilometres of border between Ukraine and Russia that are currently totally uncovered by the Russian military and the reason for this is because the west says all the time that Ukraine should not attack Russia,” Ponomarev said.
He said that Prigozhin was a smart analyst of what was really happening in Russia and was “spot on” in his prediction about a brewing revolution. Asked about the absence of evidence so far of popular resistance in Russia, he said that in January 1917, Vladimir Lenin had said he doubted his generation would live to see the fall of the Tsarist regime, “and that was less than one month before the revolution started”.
Additional reporting by Artem Mazhulin