Russia’s most powerful mercenary said Sunday he was convinced that senior Kremlin officials had banned reporting on him in state media, warning that such a misleading approach would draw backlash from the Russian people within months.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group, is a prominent member of President Vladimir Putin’s entourage who rose to prominence during the 15-month war in Ukraine.

Prigozhin, a restaurateur who joked last week that his nickname should be “Putin’s butcher” and not “Putin’s chef,” took over the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, but his role in the victory was downplayed by state television, which journalistically ignored Bakhmut’s fall. for 20 hours and did not broadcast Prigozhin’s victory speech.

Prigozhin, 61, is known to exercise horrendously strict discipline over his mercenaries, using foul language and prison idioms to insult high-ranking Putin officers, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, with whom they share a long-standing rivalry.

Ironies and threats

When asked about the ban on publicity for his work in the state media, Prigogine used a series of Russian proverbs to ridicule those in charge: “What is forbidden is always sweeter.”

“Wagner is not a slippery bar of soap that bureaucrats are used to shoving everywhere, Wagner is an awl, a dagger that you can’t hide,” Prigozhin said. “I’m absolutely convinced they banned the lighting.”

“The fact that high-ranking bureaucrats, the Kremlin towers, are trying to silence everyone from talking about Wagner will just give people another reason to protest.”

Such an approach, he said, would elicit a reaction from the Russian people.

“In the long run – and in the long run it’s two or three months – they will have a bad reaction in the world because they tried to shut everyone’s mouths and ears,” Prigogine said.

Silence of the Kremlin.

The Kremlin and the Defense Ministry have shrugged off Prigozhin’s outbursts, which appear to violate the rules of the tightly controlled political system Putin has created since he took over the Kremlin’s top post on the last day of 1999.

The Kremlin, which did not respond to a request for comment, says all the goals of the “special military operation” in Ukraine will be achieved, despite what it says is a proxy war being waged by the West against it.

After Prigozhin announced victory at Bakhmut, it took the Kremlin 10 hours to release a 36-word statement congratulating Wagner and military units on the “liberation” of Artemovsk, the nickname used by Russia in Soviet times for Bakhmut. There was no mention of Yevgeny Prigogine.

The head of the mercenary group said in his audio message today, Sunday, that 72,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the Bakhmut “meat grinder” and between 100,000 and 140,000 were injured.

However, neither Ukraine nor Russia report the death toll, but Kyiv states that Russia’s losses in Bakhmut are huge, as it was the attacking side.

Kyiv insists that its forces still control a small part of the city.

Source: Reuters.