Yevgeny Prigozhin has been ramping up pressure on Russia’s military leadership and extending his criticism to the country’s moneyed elites.
By Valerie Hopkins, NYT 24.5.23

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, in Moscow last month.Credit…AP
As Russia vowed to respond “extremely harshly” to a rare, two-day border incursion by pro-Ukrainian fighters, the leader of Russia’s largest mercenary force warned that it faced further setbacks unless its ruling elite took drastic, and likely unpopular, measures to win the war.
“The most likely scenario for us in a special operation would not be a good one,” Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, said in a profanity-laced interview with a pro-Kremlin political observer published late Tuesday on the Telegram messaging platform. “We are in such a condition that we could lose Russia,” he continued, his speech laced with profanity. “We have to prepare for a very hard war that will result in hundreds of thousands of casualties.”
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