russian president vladimir putin last year to mobilize wagner mercenaries to ukraine. he posted a message on social media this afternoon accusing russia s minister of defense, sergei shoigu, of pushing putin to invade ukraine under quote, false pretenses. he also accused the russian military of providing putin with an accurate information about the status of the war, and claim that russia is in fact losing ground on the battlefield. not long after posting that message, at around nine pm local time, prigozhin posted another message blaming the russian military for carrying out an alleged attack against his troops, killing quote, a huge amount of his own forces in ukraine. now this is something that russia has since denied, prigozhin vowed to retaliate, which prompted russian officials to open a criminal case against him. let s just understand this for
a second. this means that the head of the most effective part of russia s ground war in ukraine, without whom russia would not have been where they are today, could now soon be under arrest in his own country, which is where he claims to be right now. it is hard to make sense of this. russian military officials have taken international television to accuse prigozhin of trying to stage a coup. now whether or not his threat has any teeth, we just do not know, but the information we are receiving from reporters inside russia s at the country and the military are right now, at this hour, on high alert. video circulating widely on social media and shared by the moscow times showed armored vehicles being deployed in moscow, and the front line in ukraine where prigozhin s fighters are gathered. medusa, an investigative outlet critical of putin is also reporting that russia domestic intelligence services asking wagner fighters not to obey prigozhin s criminal and treacherous orders, and to tak
so wagner, yevgeny prigozhin raised his hand and said i have an army. i can create an army, i can use former veterans, i can use criminals, i can use people that the russian population won t really miss if they die on the battlefield, and i can provide this auxiliary force to russia. it was accepted, prigozhin formed wagner group all the way back in 2014. it was small, it was secret. then it started to grow. when vladimir putin decided to back up bashar al-assad in syria, another military intervention that putin wanted to have off the books, military campaign that did not require troop call ups, that would not impact the russian population in an emotional, or physical way. prigozhin stepped in. since then, his operations have continued to grow.
for a long time is now spilling over into a potential armed conflict. so, first of all, a little bit, who is yevgeny prigozhin? yevgeny prigozhin is a kremlin insider, he s very close to vladimir putin, or at least was very close to vladimir putin. he was sometimes described as putin s chef. it s not clear that he actually ever cooked for putin, he was more of a caterer, but he goes back to the inner circle days when putin was rising to power in st. petersburg. but he has moved well beyond the catering business. since at least 2014, he has established this wagner group. he established a private mercenary army. and the reason he was able to establish this, according to members of wagner that i ve spoken to, former members. i have traveled to several different countries were wagner has operations, including in
fighters to ignore the calls for a billion. prigozhin attempted to clarify today, by the way, that is not attempting a coup, but government officials and ukraine are saying that a column of wagner soldiers have now passed checkpoints in the direction of moscow. and a new audio posted by prigozhin says his fighters are now inside russia. there s a lot here, and we have not confirmed any of this information independently, we have just gathered for you now, and we will let you know what we do, and when we can confirm it. but the impact, and the fear that this is generating not just inside russia, but around the world is palpable. russian stocks are now down more than 3% in after hours trading, and the batters running at the bottom of the 24 a russian state television channels say that the statements in the action of prigozhin amount to a call for