Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder and financier of the private military company Wagner, called for the mobilization of the entire Russian society, saying that people are ready to support Moscow’s military efforts in Ukraine, CNN reports.

“It is necessary to mobilize not only those who go to the front, but the whole society, starting with ordinary workers who are really ready for this process,” Prigozhin said in an audio message published on his Telegram channel.

“When we travel to the regions, our recruiters see that people are ready for mobilization and understand that there is a war for Russia’s existence,” he added. Unlike Prigozhin, the Russian authorities continue to deny that they are waging war in Ukraine, calling the conflict a “special military operation.”

A new Kremlin bill to be signed by President Vladimir Putin would tighten rules for Russians conscripted into the military to prevent them from leaving the country – as many did en masse during the “partial mobilization” last year.

Leader Wagner criticized Russian officials who fled the country with their fortunes and said the entire “system” needed to be “shaken up.”

“Why don’t we want to clear this anthill, which has been created for years and which has turned from a community of people who are ready to develop something in this country, to a community of people who are only interested in their own good. -being?”, he asked. “The system needs general rehabilitation and a reduction in the number of participants in this bureaucratic community.”

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