As Vladimir Putin vows to hunt down traitors and “scum” who betrayed the motherland by opposing the war against Ukraine, the son-in-law of his very own defense minister has become a target.
And Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin seems intent on siccing his horde of followers on him.
Alexei Stolyarov found himself in Wagner’s sights over the weekend, when Russian media outlets discovered that Stolyarov—married to the daughter of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the man tasked with running the war effort—had apparently “liked” a series of anti-war posts on social media.
ADVERTISEMENT
He claimed the viral screenshots of his likes had been photoshopped, but that explanation failed to convince anyone, especially after another screenshot emerged of him apparently calling a war supporter a “Z-lowlife.”
Prigozhin, almost immediately, hinted at revenge. Since Wagner fighters can’t “like” posts on social media like Stolyarov did because they have “torn off arms and legs,” he said, perhaps the thing to do would be “to take a sledgehammer and deal with it in an adult way, leaving humor aside.”
He also called for Stolyarov to be sent to the frontline, “and since I myself am a Z-lowlife, I will help him straighten up.”
Prigozhin took fresh aim at Shoigu’s son-in-law Tuesday when he was told that Stolyarov, “despite the scandal” celebrated his birthday in Sochi over the weekend.
“We are fighting, slaving away, getting killed, and he … well, it’s good that he’s celebrating his birthday this way… By no means should he come to the Donbass because we have neither pedicures, nor manicures there, and even hairdressers are absent,” he said in an audio message released through his press service.
Shoigu, now second only to “Ukrainian neo-Nazis’’ as enemy No 1. among pro-war Russian military bloggers, has faced calls to step down over his son-in-law’s apparent condemnation of the war (on top of a slew of embarrassing failures on the battlefield).
Some “patriotic” Russian bloggers went even further and suggested the scandal might kick off a new revolution.
“The situation in the country is getting worse. Another year or two of such a war, a drop in the standard of living, access to household goods… a couple more surrenders of territory at the level of Balakliiya, not to mention Kherson, and for such behavior, with an asshole [like Stolyarov expressing] Russophobia and a history of support for Ukraine, and you very well might get a new 1917 with an Ipatiev basement,” one popular military journalist wrote, referring to the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
