Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner’s mercenary company, said Friday that the Kremlin’s arguments for invading Ukraine are based on lies concocted by his opponent, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Prigozhin hints that Russian President Vladimir Putin has also fallen victim to Shoigu’s lies, just like the rest of society, Reuters reports.

For several months, Prigozhin accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russian General Valery Gerasimov of the incompetence of high-ranking officials. But on Friday, Prigozhin took the accusations and criticism to another level – for the first time rejecting the main arguments the Kremlin used to justify its invasion of Ukraine on February 24 last year in what Russia calls a “special military operation”.

“Nothing extraordinary happened on February 24… The Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive society and the president and tell us the story that it was a crazy aggression on the part of Ukraine and that they planned to attack us with the whole of NATO,” Prigozhin said, calling the official version “beautiful history”.

“It took a war … for Shoigu to become a marshal … for him to receive the second Hero medal [al Rusiei]. The war was not necessary for the demilitarization or denazification of Ukraine.”

Sitting in a chair with a huge black Wagner flag behind his back, Prigozhin said the war was also necessary to enrich the ruling elite, who he said were unhappy with the commercial potential of the part of Ukraine’s Donbas that Moscow took control of in 2014 from separatists.

“The goal was to divide material assets (in Ukraine),” he said. “There were massive thefts in Donbas, but they wanted more.”

Prigozhin contradicts Putin

Wagner’s company led the fighting for Russia’s seizure of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut last month, and Prigozhin used his success on the battlefield, achieved at huge human cost, to publicly criticize Moscow with apparent impunity.

However, he did not criticize President Vladimir Putin, on whose support he ultimately depends.

However, his latest statement directly contradicts the reasoning put forth by Putin, who said as he sent his tanks into Ukraine that it was the country’s demilitarization and “denazification” that posed a threat to Russia, a charge Kiev denies.

It’s a narrative that Russian authorities defend with fines or prison terms for those who spread “false information” about the war.

There was no immediate response from the Ministry of Defense, which ignored Prigozhin’s earlier criticisms, at least publicly. There was also no immediate reaction from the Kremlin, which previously refused to comment on Prigozhin’s outbursts.

However, Putin supported a Defense Ministry order opposed by Prigozhin that required mercenary groups like Wagner’s PMC to sign contracts to control the ministry by July 1.

Some Russian analysts have suggested that Prigozhin has political ambitions and may try to replace Shoigu, an idea he has always played down.

On Thursday, he accused military leaders of lying to Putin and the Russian people about the scale of Russian losses and failures in Ukraine.

In Friday’s video, he said that Moscow could have reached an agreement with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before the war, and that the conflict was a disaster for Russia, and that tens of thousands of lives had been wasted, including members of Russia’s most capable forces.

Depicting senior officers as fools who drank vodka, brandy and caviar, he argued that corruption was hampering Russia’s military efforts.

“We are bathing in our own blood,” he said. “Time flies quickly.”

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