Has the head of the Wagner mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Putin confidant, now had enough of the war in Ukraine? The 61-year-old spoke publicly for the first time about the end of the so-called "special operation" on the blog of his Concord group of companies. Prigozhin said: "Today would be ideal to announce the end of the military special operation and to declare that all goals planned by Russia have been achieved - and in a way we have achieved the results." The blog text also states: "For Russia, there is always a risk that the situation on the front line may deteriorate after the start of the counteroffensive."
Media and observers close to Ukraine, in particular, see Prigozhin’s statements as his fear of the spring offensive of the Ukrainian armed forces, which is apparently imminent.
Is it all just sarcasm?
But the US think tank "Institute for the Study of War" (ISW) assumes that many - especially in the West - have misinterpreted Prigozhin's text and that the true content of the statements by the Wagner boss was lost in the translation from Russian lost in English. A full reading of Prigozhin's pamphlet, titled " Only an Honest Fight: No Negotiations, " according to the ISW , does not indicate that the Wagner boss advocates an end to the Russian war in Ukraine.
Prigoschin - so schreibt der US-Thinktank - "hat einen eigenwilligen rhetorischen und schriftstellerischen Stil, der sich stark auf trockenen Sarkasmus, selektive Zweideutigkeit, Aphorismen, Vulgarität und ironischen Slang stützt. Prigozhins isolierte Zitate, die aus dem Gesamtkontext seiner Botschaften herausgelöst sind, verlieren oft ihre ursprüngliche Bedeutung."
Pro-Kremlin news aggregator Readovka notes on April 15 that some unspecified Russian-language Telegram channels — as well as some Western media outlets — simply repeated Prigozhin's pseudo-argument to engage in tempting negotiations, ignoring Prigozhin's call for a protracted struggle . However, Readovka underscores Prigozhin's actual argument: the "inconvenient truth" is that Russia must continue fighting because negotiations to end the war "did more harm than good."
Release of Ukrainian prisoners of Wagner mercenaries on Orthodox Easter
At the same time, a new video has emerged of Yevgeny Prigozhin apparently ordering a hooded military man to release his unit's Ukrainian prisoners on the occasion of Orthodox Easter.
Prigozhin, according to videos, at the Orthodox Easter in Bakhmut
According to various videos distributed on the Internet, Yevgeny Prigozhin spent the Orthodox Easter this weekend in Bakhmut, Ukraine. Also to show that he and his fighters are in the city.