Russia's mutinous mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was shown in a video on Wednesday welcoming his fighters to Belarus, telling them they would take no further part in the Ukraine war for now but ordering them to gather their strength for Africa.
    • EnderWi99in@kbin.social
      9·
      1 year ago

      He runs his own private army with a ton of loyalists. That’s not as easy to push out a window and Putin knows it. On top of that, I wouldn’t doubt for a minute that Putin at some level agrees with his complaints of Shoigu and Gerasimov.

      • thx1138@lemmy.one
        41·
        1 year ago

        And unfortunately Putin encouraged Wagner to be funded by all sorts of black market, crypto enabled activity. The Kremlin can’t just flip the off switch on them, because there isn’t one.

  • jcit878@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I get that its essentially a merc group and ‘a job’ for a lot of the wagners, but surely some are thinking about the friends/brothers they lost fighting in ukraine and now essentially being told it was for nothing now its time to just go fight somewhere else for ‘reasons’. i cant imaging moral would be high, although im not sure many of them have much choice other than to go along