Leaked Wagner chief diaries exhibits his deep ties to Putin and Kremlin
Leaked diaries belonging to Yevgeny Prigozhin reveal the extraordinary extent of the mercenary chief’s hyperlinks with Kremlin officers, displaying the challenges Putin faces in his efforts to “purge” attainable Wagner allies.
Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group and the mastermind behind final month’s rise up try in Russia, saved a decade-long file of his conferences with outstanding Russian officers.
The content material of those paperwork could pose a brand new headache for Vladimir Putin, proving Prighozin’s direct entry to members of the Russian President’s interior circle.
The leaked calendar, which runs as much as 2021, was obtained early this yr by Die Welt and shared with Business Insider.
It has now turn into a vital piece of intelligence, in mild of final month’s failed mutiny by the Wagner group.
They embrace quite a few entries for Ruslan Tsalikov, deputy minister of defence and Anton Vaino, the chief of employees for Putin’s government workplace.
Other notable mentions from these paperwork are Aleksey Dyumin, a former bodyguard of Putin’s and present governor of the Tula area.
Other notable entries are these displaying repeated appointments with Valery Gerasimov, the pinnacle of the Russian navy, and Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Minister of Defence.
Vladimir Putin is barely talked about twice, though the diaries present Prigozhin had over 70 conferences with the presidential chief of employees.
It is probably going that Vladimir Putin’s well-documented paranoia might be exacerbated by these revelations, given the local weather of instability since Wagner’s tried “coup’’ on June 23, which occurred after a interval of deteriorating relations between the Russian Ministry of Defence and the chief of the mercenary group.
The Wagner Group is a personal navy firm, beforehand deployed in Crimea and japanese Ukraine’s Donbas area in 2014.
Its troops have been dispatched in a number of conflicts since then, together with the Syrian Civil War. They have additionally performed a outstanding function in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
New studies from Russian native news retailers, echoed by Insider, have revealed that Prigozhin might be again in Russia, after a brief interval of exile in Belarus.
These studies cite Belarusian chief Alexander Lukashenko, who mentioned Prigozhin returned to his dwelling metropolis of St. Petersburg this week.
If confirmed, this sudden flip of occasions could also be seen as a sign that Putin’s grip on energy could also be weaker than anticipated, given his normal ruthless method to political opponents.