Illustrative photo – Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of mercenaries from the Russian Wagner group.
Moscow – Russia's “special operation,” as Moscow officially calls its invasion of Ukraine, has made Ukraine's military one of the strongest in the world, the owner of mercenary Wagner said in an interview (in Russian transcript Wagner's) group Yevgeny Prigozhin. In addition to praising the units against which his mercenaries are fighting in Ukraine, he also criticized the progress of the Russian army, the goals of the Russian leadership and the Russian elite, the Meduza server reports.
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Photo gallery: Russian invasion of Ukraine
“The goal of the special military operation was denazification, but we made Ukraine a nation known all over the world. They are like the Greeks or the Romans in times of prosperity. As for 'demilitarization'; if they had 500 tanks at the beginning of the special operation, now they have five thousand. If 20,000 soldiers could fight then, now there are 400,000. How did we demilitarize it?” asks Prigozhin in an interview.
The so-called denazification and demilitarization were set out as one of the goals of the “special military operation” by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who more than a year ago issued the order for the invasion of Russian troops into the neighboring country. Both Ukraine and the West reject this as a pretext for acquiring Ukrainian territory.
“I love my homeland, I listen to Putin,” Prigozhin said in an interview lasting more than an hour, but he immediately criticized the Ministry of Defense, with which he has been in a power struggle for months and often reproaches him for mistakes regarding the war campaign. “The main problem is (Russian Defense Minister Sergei) Shoigu and (Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery) Gerasimov,” adds Prigozhin in the interview.
According to Prigozhin, Russia must declare martial law, a new wave of mobilization and fundamentally increase the production of ammunition, otherwise there is a risk of its demise. “We have to stop enjoying ourselves, build new roads, new infrastructure and work only on war,” Prigozhin said. “Russia must live like North Korea for a few years, close all borders, stop fooling around, take all the boys from abroad and work hard,” Prigozhin added.
“I think that Ukraine is one of the strongest armies (on They have a high level of organization, training, intelligence, they have all kinds of weapons. They work equally successfully with any systems – Soviet or NATO,” Prigozhin pointed out. Before that, however, he praised his mercenary group, which he says is the best army in the world.
The interview with Prigozhin was conducted by Konstantin Dolgov, according to the Russian-language BBC server, a political strategist and former pro-Russian activist from Kharkiv. After 2014, he moved to Russia, where he now works for Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin's deputy chief of staff.
