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News Flash: Is a coup attempt happening in Russia? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-06-23
The NY Times cites reports:
Russia sent armored vehicles into the streets of Moscow and a southern Russian city near Ukraine after Yevgeny Prigozhin accused Russian forces of attacking his Wagner mercenaries and threatened reprisals.
Anton Troianovski and Ivan Nechepurenko report on the latest conflict:
Russian generals late on Friday accused Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the outspoken mercenary tycoon, of trying to mount a coup against President Vladimir V. Putin, as the Russian authorities opened an investigation into Mr. Prigozhin for “organizing an armed rebellion.” The long-running feud between Mr. Prigozhin and the Russian military over the war in Ukraine has now escalated into an open confrontation, setting up the biggest challenge to Mr. Putin’s authority since he launched his invasion of Ukraine 16 months ago. Videos circulating widely on social media showed that military and national guard armored vehicles had been deployed in Moscow and the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, near the front line in Ukraine where Mr. Prigozhin’s fighters had been operating….
The in-fighting between Prigozhin and the Russian Military has apparently hit a new peak fratricide:
..Mr. Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary force has proved pivotal to the Russian war effort in Ukraine, but in recent months, he repeatedly chastised Russia’s top brass for alleged corruption and indifference to regular soldiers’ lives. On Friday night, he took his accusations to a new level, claiming that the Russian military had attacked Wagner encampments, killing “a huge number of fighters.” “The evil borne by the country’s military leadership must be stopped,” Mr. Prigozhin said in one of a series of voice recordings posted to the Telegram social network after 9 p.m. Moscow time. Minutes later, he suggested that his Wagner mercenary force was prepared to go on the offensive against Russia’s own Defense Ministry, saying, “There’s 25,000 of us, and we are going to figure out why chaos is happening in the country.” Just past midnight Moscow time, Russia’s prosecutor general announced that Mr. Prigozhin was being investigated “on suspicion of organizing an armed rebellion” and would face as much as 20 years in prison if prosecuted. There was no sign of the whereabouts of Mr. Prigozhin, and as of midnight Moscow time, his social media accounts had been silent for more than an hour.
You had better believe governments around the world are watching this and going WTF? There’s no word yet if Prigozhin has had an encounter with a tall building, or for that matter where Putin is, but it is going to prove interesting however it turns out.
Fingers crossed that all the chaos will be confined to Russia.
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