The head of Wagner’s mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in a public letter to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that a Ukrainian offensive is imminent and that it aims to isolate his fighters from the rest of Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, Reuters reports.
In a letter published on Monday by the press service of Concordia, his catering company, from which the nickname “Putin’s chef” is derived, Prigozhin says that Kyiv is planning a “large-scale attack” in late March or early April.
“I ask you to take all possible measures to prevent the private military company Wagner from being cut off from the main forces of the Russian army, which would lead to negative consequences for the conduct of a special military operation,” Prigozhin wrote.
He made public a similar letter to the Russian Ministry of Defense for the first time, although he has repeatedly criticized the military command in Moscow, including suggesting that Sergei Shoigu and the head of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, may be guilty of treason.
Is Evgeny Prigozhin trying to throw a cat into the yard of the Military Commissariat?
Prigozhin’s move on Monday could have two purposes: to sow confusion among the Ukrainian commands or to try to shift the blame from now on to Shoigu and the generals in Moscow, if Kyiv’s expected spring offensive succeeds.
Prigozhin also announced that he had provided the Russian Ministry of Defense with details of Ukraine’s plan and his own proposal for countering the Ukrainian offensive.
“Putin’s chef” did not make these documents public and did not provide information about how he would have learned about the intentions of the Ukrainian side.
Instead, he said his mercenaries control 70 percent of the city of Bakhmut, which Wagner’s group has been trying to capture since early August last year in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war launched by Vladimir Putin.
While he declined to speculate on where the Ukrainian offensive might take place, Czech President Petr Pavel, a former NATO commander, said on Monday that it may be Kyiv’s only real chance to defeat the Russian army.
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Source: Hot News
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