“Ordered to hit my men”

The swollen face, the low voice, the eyelids fluttering nervously, the sighs, the curt answers to lapidary questions. A painful canvas. The video of the interrogation to which the Wagner mercenaries subject the lieutenant colonel Roman Venetivincommander of the 72nd Mechanized Rifle Brigade of the Russian army, is the mirror of the merciless clash that tears apart the different souls of the imperial army of Putin.

Prigozhin, from the coup in Russia to the political role: here are the ambitious plans of the head of Wagner

THE CONFESSION
Venetivin confesses that he ordered to fire on the columns of the Wagner group that left Bakhmut behind, months and months of close combat in what is currently the bloodiest battle fought in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion. The Ukrainian generals had predicted it: the day Prigozhin’s mercenary troops left the front not to advance but to retreat, they would be shot by the Defense Ministry’s brother knives. A revenge hatched in recent weeks in which Putin’s former chef at Wagner’s head has hurled his invectives against Minister Shoigu, the Chief of Staff Gerasimov, the Kremlin and the Muscovite and St. Petersburg elites via social media.

On May 17, near the village of Semigorye, Venetivin’s men allegedly fired on Wagner’s “musicians” because of the “personal dislike” their commander now admits he harbors for Prigozhin. He adds that he was drunk, in partial defense. And a Russian Telegram channel, Sirena, reports that it has verified the identity and discovered that the 45-year-old officer, taken prisoner by the Wagners, worked in a private security company in Nizhny Novgorod and ten years ago had to hand over the drunk driving licence. A minor episode and a minor figure, except that Prigozhin exposes a Russian officer to the media pillory. From Belgorod, the border town victim of raids and incursions by anti-Putin “Russian partisans”, the latter propose an exchange of the lieutenant colonel with their hostages, also Russians. Hypothesis that Prigozhin rejects by saying that he has already delivered Venetivin to military justice in Moscow, and does not want exchanges of “Russians with Russians”.

THE COMPLAINTS
The merciless video posted by Prigozhin comes after reports in recent days, on Telegram, about the dissemination of road mines, booby-traps and other anti-tank devices along the way back of the Wagnerians from the front. A minefield set up by Shoigu’s army. What’s more: the shots on the mercenaries would have started just when they had finished clearing the road. A real fratricidal ambush. Prigozhin is even more explicit in his accusations, as reported by the Institute for the study of war, stating that the bombs had been placed in areas where no Ukrainian units were operating, therefore it was a deliberate attack, a public “whipping”, a punitive passage under the gauntlet by Russian soldiers. What’s more, the militiamen of Kadyrov, the Chechen leader happy to replace the Wagnerians in the Russian imagination and make a good impression with his undisputed and adored reference, Putin, have thrown themselves against the “musicians”.

The Wagners and Kadyrov’s men are competing, for example, in proposing themselves as those who will be able to free and pacify the Belgorod region which is now the terrain of daily incursions from the Ukrainian side of the border. Chechens have come to define Prigozhin as a “hysterical blogger.” The musicians on one side, the Chechens and regular Russian troops on the other, even engaged in a rifle battle before withdrawing from Kherson in southern Ukraine, according to reports from the London Times. According to Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political analyst, that Prigozhin was able to go so far in accusing the Russian elites depends on the fact that “Putin today needs Prigozhin more than Prigozhin needs Putin”. In the background, the battle for the Kremlin when everything is over, the war is over and Putin, whatever happens, will only have to lick the wounds of an announced defeat. And fight not to be overthrown.

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