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Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin. File photo: AP

Russian Wagner boss sees traitors in the Kremlin and demands YouTube ban

  • Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin took aim at the Kremlin administration for failing to block YouTube
  • The increasingly prominent Russian businessman has been a close ally of President Vladimir Putin
Russia
Agencies

The head of Russian paramilitary organisation Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has accused staff from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s entourage of treason.

They were pretending to be on Putin’s side, but were in fact disrupting the course of the war and waiting for a quick end so that they could pander to the US in the event of Russia’s defeat, Prigozhin claimed in a statement posted on his Telegram channel on Wednesday.

The businessman, whose troops are fighting alongside the Russian army in Ukraine, said Moscow would soon comply with his demands to block the YouTube video platform.

“YouTube is an information plague of our time,” Prigozhin said.

So far, the service has not been blocked in Russia – unlike Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, for example – “because there is a large number of people working in the presidential administration who think of only one thing – that Russia should lose the war as soon as possible”.

These people are the “traitors to their people and their country”, and “Wagner’s sledgehammer” awaits them in the future, Prigozhin said.

Ex-Wagner commander seeks asylum in Norway after fleeing Russia

He was alluding to a Wagner video which is said to show the killing of a renegade mercenary from his own ranks.

According to the video, the Wagner fighter had first voluntarily gone into Ukrainian captivity, but then came back to Russia in the course of a prisoner exchange and, according to the video, was beaten to death with a sledgehammer. The clip caused international horror.

Officials considered blocking YouTube in Russia, as other social platforms, early in the course of the war, but did not proceed to do so.

For many Russians, who complain of manipulation by the one-sided propaganda on state television, YouTube is one of the last sources of unhindered access to a wide variety of information.

Wagner fighters and their boss Yevgeny Prigozhin pose for a picture in a salt mine in Soledar, Ukraine. Photo: Press service of ‘Concord’ via Reuters

Prigozhin, sometimes called “Putin’s chef” for the Kremlin contracts of his catering firm, had until last autumn denied any connection with Wagner, which Russian officials say has military and mining contracts in Africa and is active in Syria.

But the invasion of Ukraine, and the repeated failures of Russia’s military in a campaign now almost 11 months old, encouraged him to enter a public arena where most dissenting voices are quickly silenced by the authorities, presenting himself as a ruthless and effective patriot.

US thinks Wagner founder wants control of salt, gypsum from mines near Bakhmut

Tension between Prigozhin and the government burst into the open last Friday when the Defence Ministry claimed the capture of the Ukrainian town of Soledar but made no mention of the role of Wagner, and had already posted a picture of Prigozhin and his fighters in Soledar’s salt mine.

Prigozhin publicly complained of attempts to minimise Wagner’s role and belittle its achievements, and the ministry later issued an update praising the “courageous and selfless actions” of Wagner fighters. The Kremlin denied a rift.

dpa and Reuters

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