The owner of the Wagner private military contractor made his most direct challenge to the Kremlin yet on Friday, calling for an armed rebellion aimed at ousting Russia's defense minister.
The security services reacted immediately by opening a criminal investigation into Yevgeny Prigozhin and calling for his arrest.
He claimed that the chief of the General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, scrambled warplanes to strike Wagner's convoys, which were driving alongside ordinary vehicles. President Vladimir Putin has been informed about the situation and "all the necessary measures were being taken," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Prigozhin claimed that Shoigu went to the Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don personally to direct the strike and then "cowardly" fled."The evil embodied by the country's military leadership must be stopped," he shouted, urging the army not to offer any resistance to Wagner as it moves to "restore justice."
"It's a stab in the back to the country and the president," he said. "It's impossible to imagine a stronger blow to the image of Russia and its armed forces. Such a provocation could only be staged by enemies of Russia." The International Atomic Energy Agency noted Thursday that "the military situation has become increasingly tense" while a Ukrainian counteroffensive that got underway this month unfolds in Zaporizhzhia province, where the namesake plant is located, and in an adjacent part of Donetsk province.
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