Media Wire

Wagner chief rejects surrender, says Putin “deeply mistaken”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of private military company (PMC) Wagner, has refused to surrender following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address describing his actions as a betrayal.

Prigozhin said on Telegram that Putin is “deeply mistaken.”

“Regarding the ‘betrayal of the motherland,’ the president is deeply mistaken. We are patriots of our Motherland, we fought and are fighting, all the fighters of the PMC Wagner,” Prigozhin said in audio messages shared by the press service.

“And no one is going to turn themselves in at the request of the president, the FSB or anyone else,” he added.

Prigozhin’s language in the message is in clear defiance of both the Kremlin and security services. Previously, he has been careful not to criticize Putin directly, or challenge his authority.

Prigozhin also returned to a familiar theme, stating that his men are patriots and refuse to perpetuate the “corruption, deceit, and bureaucracy” in which he claims Russia is living.

“When we were told that we were at war with Ukraine, we went and fought. But it turned out that ammunition, weapons, all the money that was allocated is also being stolen, and the bureaucrats are sitting [idly], saving it for themselves, just for the occasion that happened today, when someone [is] marching to Moscow,” he continued.

Putin has said the attempted insurrection by Prigozhin amounts to a betrayal of Russia and its people. He also vowed that the country’s law enforcement agencies will take decisive actions to restore order.

In a televised speech on Saturday, Putin appealed to Russian service members and those “who have been drawn into this criminal gamble by deceit or threats.”

On Friday, Prigozhin accused the Russian Defense Ministry of launching a deadly missile strike on a Wagner Group camp, vowing retaliation. The ministry, however, dismissed the allegation, describing it as “an information provocation.”

IFP Media Wire

Reports and views published in the Media Wire section have been retrieved from other news agencies and websites, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Iran Front Page (IFP) news website. The IFP may change the headlines of the reports in a bid to make them compatible with its own style of covering Iran News, and does not make any changes to the content. The source and URL of all reports and news stories are mentioned at the bottom of each article.

Recent Posts

Historic all-Women flight lands in Mashhad

For the first time in Iran's aviation history, a flight carrying an all-female crew and…

4 hours ago

Tehran Cyber Police shut down 40 Instagram accounts of harassers

Tehran’s Cyber Police Chief, Brigadier General Davood Moazzami Goudarzi, announced a crackdown on individuals causing…

5 hours ago

Qatar warns may stop gas shipments to EU amid Russia-Ukraine war

Doha will stop gas shipments to the EU if member states enforce new legislation on…

6 hours ago

UK armed forces struggling for recruits: Telegraph

At least 15,000 British soldiers left the country's Armed Forces between November 2023 and October…

6 hours ago

Nearly 85k Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine: Report

Journalists have identified the names of 84,761 Russian soldiers who died during the war in…

9 hours ago

US downs own warplane while bombing Yemen: Pentagon

The United States Navy has inadvertently shot down its own F/A-18 fighter jet in a…

10 hours ago