PRIGOZHIN TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT PUTIN'S WAR IN UKRAINE [View all]

[orangecrush]

ONE OF THE most subversive things that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin did during his brief rebellion last weekend was to tell the truth.

Prigozhin is a pathological liar, a professional disinformation artist who was indicted in the United States in connection with the internet troll farm he ran, which was at the forefront of Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Donald Trump win.

But as the mercenary boss began his mutiny in late June, he experienced a brief and surprising bout of honesty when he launched into an online tirade against what he said were the lies used by Moscow to justify the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. His comments were so candid and off-message for a Russian leader that it seemed as if someone had mistakenly handed him a speech meant for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

ONE OF THE most subversive things that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin did during his brief rebellion last weekend was to tell the truth.

Prigozhin is a pathological liar, a professional disinformation artist who was indicted in the United States in connection with the internet troll farm he ran, which was at the forefront of Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Donald Trump win.

But as the mercenary boss began his mutiny in late June, he experienced a brief and surprising bout of honesty when he launched into an online tirade against what he said were the lies used by Moscow to justify the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. His comments were so candid and off-message for a Russian leader that it seemed as if someone had mistakenly handed him a speech meant for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.


The invasion was nothing more than a massive land grab by the Russian oligarchy, Prigozhin charged, designed to enrich the country’s powerful elites while poor Russians served as cannon fodder. Russian claims that a Nazi regime in Ukraine, backed by NATO, was about to attack Russia were lies, Prigozhin said. The war was started by the Russian oligarchy to benefit themselves and gain power. In his rant, Prigozhin did not criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin by name, focusing instead on the broader Russian elite, and specifically on his personal enemy Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

“The Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO bloc,” Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel on June 23. The truth, he said, was that “there was nothing extraordinary happening on the eve of February 24,” the day last year when Russian invaded. Ukraine was not planning any kind of attack against Russia, he added.


https://theintercept.com/2023/07/01/prigozhin-truth-putin-war-ukraine/