The New York Times reports on a remarkable development that occurred just before Vladimir Putin delivered a major speech on Tuesday calling for Russian unity in order to win Putin’s war against Ukraine:
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group accused the country’s defense minister and its highest-ranking general of treason on Tuesday, intensifying the most high-profile dispute in the Russian forces since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.
Wagner’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has taken aim at military leaders in a series of increasingly hostile audio messages on social media this week, and on Tuesday accused the “chief of the general staff and minister of defense” of withholding ammunition and supplies from his fighters to try to destroy Wagner, “which can be equated to treason.”
“A bunch of military-related officials have decided that it is their country, that it is their people,” Mr. Prigozhin said in one profanity-laden audio message published by his press service on Tuesday. “They have decided that these people will die when it is convenient to them, when they feel like it.”
The Defense Ministry has not publicly responded to the accusations. Mr. Prigozhin, a longtime ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, operated for years in secrecy, but he has assumed an increasingly public role in the conflict since last summer. His growing criticism of the war effort in recent months has been causing concern among some Kremlin insiders. . . .
“I don’t have an option, I’m going until the end,” Mr. Prigozhin said in another audio message on Tuesday, explaining his decision to go public with his accusations against the military commanders. “My people are dying in heaps.”