Prigozhin: Ukraine did not attack russia, and the war was started by "a bunch of beasts to show off"

The founder of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has published a new frank interview with accusations against the russian Defense Ministry.

In the video, published by Prigozhin's press service, he says that russia's war against Ukraine was unleashed by a "clan of oligarchs" "who are now actually running russia," and that Ukraine did not intend to attack russia.

According to Prigozhin, the russian Defense Ministry and General Staff "still hope that they can win this war," but they are "carefully" deceiving President putin by claiming unrealistic losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Prigozhin says that the reports of "60 destroyed Leopard tanks" and "thousands" of killed Ukrainian soldiers are "complete, total nonsense."

When the "deep deceptions" are revealed, it will be too late, and "a bunch of these scums, realizing that they have fucked up a huge piece of territory, will gather and say that they have regrouped to more favorable positions."

Prigozhin admitted that Ukraine "has not bombed Donbas for eight years." He notes that the war was started through the fault of some "oligarchic clan" that governs russia, and the situation on the contact line in Donbas in early 2022 was no different from what had been there for many years.

Ukraine did not show "frenzied aggression" and did not want to attack russia together with NATO.

Prigozhin calls russia's attack on Ukraine itself a "poorly planned operation" when the russian military leadership decided that no one would stop russian troops from marching on Kyiv. He, however, suggests that this would have been the case if the "degenerates" from the General Staff "had not built long columns" of "naked and barefoot soldiers" who had little ammunition.

First of all, he blamed these mistakes on russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who until mid-March 2022 was an "old man" and was only thinking about how to get out of this situation. Prigozhin blamed him for the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers.

The head of Wagner's PMC said that a decree was allegedly already being prepared for Shoigu to be awarded the title of Marshal and the second star of the Hero of russia. And the whole war was needed so that "a bunch of beasts could just celebrate and publicize themselves."

He also stated that the "holy war against those who offend the russian people" had turned into "racketeering and ratting."

Later, Prigozhin confirmed that he had written a statement to the Investigative Committee of the russian federation against Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov:

"Yes, these are the same statements against Gerasimov and Shoigu, according to which they should be held responsible for the genocide of the russian people, the murder of tens of thousands of russian citizens and the transfer of russian territories to the enemy. The intentional transfer, as well as the murder of russian citizens and genocide. Shoigu is committing genocide on a national basis," he said.

Background. Bloomberg reported that the russian elite doubts putin's ability to win the war in Ukraine and would like to stop it.