ministry, prigozhin establishes on power base. he became a force to reckon with inside russia. and then with his latest war in ukraine that began about a year and a half ago, prigozhin entered in a major way. wagner expanded exponentially. it went from a small, secretive force operating in a little known conflicts that the russian people weren t talking about to the main war effort which is the war in ukraine. and once his fighters started to engage in combat, in some cases performed better than the regular army then a rivalry began. a rivalry that at times has been extremely tense, because prigozhin has for months now been accusing the the defense establishment, particularly the defense ministry of undermining his forces. and he has accused the defense
the central african republic. i spent quite a bit of time focusing on the subject, so in 2014 roughly, wagner began to have an armed force, initially in ukraine, because there was a need. there was a need because the kremlin, vladimir putin, wanted to keep fighting in that country. this was just around the time, and just after the time of the takeover of crimea. but he wanted to do it in a way that was off the books, in a way that you could use expendable fighters that did not really impact the population. 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
Transcripts for MSNBC Alex Wagner Tonight 20240604 04:18:30 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
minister shoigu in russia, specifically, of treating him like a rival, treating him like an enemy, of not giving his forces the ammunition that they need. prigozhin at times as stood in front of the bodies of his men who died in the city of bakhmut and said, these man died because the russian military establishment is not giving them what they need, is treating them like an enemy. what we saw, apparently, over the last 24 hours was a whole new level of escalation, where prigozhin is saying russian forces deliberately attacked a group of wagner fighters who were camped in the forest, and killed a large number of them. again, no clear verification, but what does seem clear is that these tensions have escalated to an entirely different level, a new category. and then what prigozhin allegedly said in these audio
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. he expanded into africa, which is a way for the operation to raise money. they extract a lot of gold illegally, a lot of blood diamonds from places like the central african republic, there will be a story on that a few weeks ago. once they started fighting on multiple fronts, and were able to generate their own weapon