More than ten months after Vladimir Putin’s troops spectacularly failed to take over Ukraine and settled instead for racking up war crimes, his top allies in the war are at each other’s throats over “erotic fantasies” as Russian troops brace for new humiliating defeats on the battlefield.
Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin fired the latest shot Wednesday, dismissing one-time Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s prognoses for the incoming year as “erotic fantasies.”
Medvedev, once seen as a moderate counter to Putin, has solidified his reputation as a crazed keyboard warrior during the war, and predicted in a Twitter thread earlier this week that 2023 will see the rise of a “Fourth Reich” in Europe, civil war in the U.S., and Elon Musk as president.
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“Of course, every fantasy has its place,” Prigozhin said in a statement through his press service. But Medvedev’s is perhaps only of interest to science fiction writers, he said.
While Prigozhin’s comment on the former PM’s “futuristic hypotheses” seemed benign on its face, it did not go unnoticed by pro-Kremlin pundits.
“Yevgeny Prigozhin has now attacked Medvedev, just like that, called his posts ‘erotic fantasies,’” pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov wrote on Telegram. Noting that Prigozhin is also warring with St. Petersburg’s governor and top military brass, Markov said, “I think that in the near future Prigozhin will be corrected.”
Prigozhin, who’s seen his star rise since he vowed to “win this damn war” for Putin by tossing thousands of prison inmates onto the battlefield, has seemed to relish in butting heads with those in power. He backed up his own mercenaries after they called the chief of Russia’s army a “motherfucker” earlier this week.
And according to the investigative independent outlet iStories, he’s made himself a target by pissing off just about everybody within the Russian president’s orbit.
“Since his work in Petersburg, Putin has lived in two worlds,” one source close to the Kremlin was quoted saying. “One world is a circle of decent people, the ‘Ozero’ dacha cooperative that united colleagues and associates of Putin... And the other world is former criminals and people in one way or another connected with crime.”
According to the source, the two worlds were never meant to merge, and “ordinary acquaintances of Putin tied to crime in the past understood that.”
Except for Prigozhin, the source said, who is now putting that to the test with his Wagner mercenaries in Ukraine.
Figures within the Russian presidential administration are growing increasingly alarmed over Prigozhin’s oversized influence in the war, especially because his proximity to Putin and media operations leaves him virtually unchecked, iStories reports.
Even as he publicly bashes Russian defense officials, they know they can’t do anything about it because Putin believes Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries are crucial to winning the war, the report notes. So much so that the Kremlin ordered “major businessmen” to pour some of their own money into the “special military operation” by way of Wagner’s private army, according to one source cited by iStories.
Prigozhin is said to have also roiled up many in the powerful Federal Security Service (FSB), which was deployed to assist in his wild prison-recruitment scheme for the war. Officials within the FSB are said to fear they will have to take the blame if things go haywire once the freed inmates return to ordinary civilian life in Russia, while Prigozhin will lap up the glory of victory if his Wagner mercenaries help Putin score any wins in Ukraine.
While infighting has been widely reported since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February, it seems to be escalating at a time when Putin’s troops are bracing for devastating new defeats on the battlefield that could ultimately decide the war.
Ukraine’s military revealed on Tuesday that Russian troops seem to be close to exhausting their resources in the stronghold of Bakhmut, the scene of the fiercest fighting on the frontline, where Ukraine’s military has fended off a Russian takeover during months of brutal battles against the notorious Wagner Group.
And on Wednesday, a representative for Ukraine’s Armed Forces urged the public to “wait for official” news about the gateway city of Kreminna, which The New York Times reported Ukrainian troops were close to reclaiming—a victory that could topple Russia’s entire line of defense in the east.
As the New Year approaches and the Kremlin has nothing to show for it, there is a growing contingent within Putin’s circle who believe Russia should “pause everything,” the independent outlet Verstka reported Wednesday, citing sources close to the administration.
Of the growing number of officials taking that stance, one source said, “For them it is not an act of reason or a reasonable choice, but one of desperation.”
