Wagner boss Prigozhin insists: 'We didn't want to overthrow government', in first comments

RUSSIAN mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Monday (June 26) that a one-day mutiny by his Wagner force had been intended not to overthrow Russia's government but to register a protest over what he said was its ineffectual conduct of the conflict in Ukraine.

In his first public comments since ending the mutiny late on Saturday, Prigozhin repeated his frequent claim that Wagner was the most effective fighting force in Russia "and even the world," and that it put to shame the units that Moscow had sent into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

He said the way it had been able to seize the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don without bloodshed and to send an armed convoy to within 200 km of Moscow had been testament to the effectiveness of his fighters.

"We showed a master class, as it should have been on Feb. 24, 2022. We did not have the goal of overthrowing the existing regime and the legally elected government," he said in an 11-minute audio message released on the Telegram messaging app.

Prigozhin renewed an allegation, so far unsupported by evidence, that the Russian military had attacked a Wagner camp with missiles and then helicopters, killing about 30 of its men, and said this had been the immediate trigger for what he called a "march of justice."

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[arthursuns]

As a Russian speaker, I can say that more than half of this audio recording is not included in the subtitles. You can see that at 0:58 the same line of text appears again as at 0:19. Absolute mess, as expected from The Sun.

[andymcvey]

Well done for managing too turn this into a 4 minute video and somehow leave bits out, mind blown ha

[grfe]

that $6.2B the pentagon mysteriously "lost" ended up in his pocket for that coup. they staged it, pocketed the money and now he and Putin are splitting it 🤣. FJB

[npcooooo]

CIA to Wagner leader :
We will give you $6 billion to do a coup
Putin to Wagner leader :
You take $1 billion and I’ll take $5 billion

[gregsmith]

Oh, that explains it: 'The Sun'!

I missed that and watched for almost two minutes, thinking, 'what?!' Then I realised I'd promised myself never to watch anything they produce ever again, laughed at my error, grimised, wrote this and left.😂

[_vicary]

Such professionally made captions.

Whoever made this, I would love to invite them to play scramble with my toddler.

[egorzz]

half of the words have not been translated, the Western media are so deceitful!

[TheLoneliestManOnline]

*Whoever did the subtitles on this definitely 💯 missed atleast half of what he was saying, or the Russian language uses whole sentences for each word 😂😂😂😂*

[Jigsjigz]

The democrats and cia pulled his funds in a double cross so he was like nope im turning back

[BritishEngineer]

The closed captioning differ greatly from the actual things said.

[Barynya]

️As a result of intrigues and ill-conceived decisions, on July 1, they wanted to disband Wagner PMC.

️When the first assault detachment approached Moscow, it became obvious that a lot of blood would be shed, so we felt that the demonstration of what we wanted to do was sufficient.

️We covered 700 kilometers in a day, not a single soldier on the ground was killed, we regret that we were forced to strike at air assets, but they threw bombs and struck.

We went to demonstrate our protest, and not to overthrow the government in the country.

The purpose of the campaign was to prevent the destruction of the PMC "Wagner" and to bring to justice those persons who, through their unprofessional actions, made a huge number of mistakes during the military defense.

️Lukashenko extended his hand and offered to find solutions, the columns turned back and went to the field camps.

️The march of justice showed many things that we talked about earlier: the most serious security problems in the country, we blocked all military units and airfields that were on our way, in 24 hours we covered the distance from the launch site of Russian troops on February 24 to Kiev, and from the same point to Uzhgorod.

️If the actions on February 24 were carried out by a unit by the level of training, like the Wagner PMC, the special operation might have lasted a day, it is clear that there were other problems, but we showed the level of organization that the Russian army should correspond to.

[stephenlaw]

The moral of this story, Dont do deals with the devil

[angel]

Where have all the Russian trolls gone. Perhaps its true they were all in Prigozhin's pocket

[lukegarcia]

Essentially this is beef between Wagner and the Russian top brass who hate them, simple

[theagency-psev]

We need a group like this in england get rid of the goverment

[bonusnudges]

He’s a dead man walking, he’ll be drinking out of the glass tea pot

[milliammaximus]

Wagner has always had a limited contract, end of May, his soldats are Russian, Prigozhin Ego will destroy him, he is only an employee and Poutin disagrees with his methods.

[shreeshardx]

Progizini don't worry... there is a Bullet waiting for you...😂😂😂

[Cruzeoc]

Where have all the Ukrainian trolls gone now? They were so vocal when the thought this was something 🤣🤣

[freedomforthebrave]

Lol why are only nato countries crying about this news