Mr. Prigozhin’s accusations created a ripple effect among Russian pro-war activists, who fear that an open conflict between the army and Wagner forces could threaten the Russian front lines during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. In Ukraine, some viewed his statements as more evidence of internal divisions within the Russian war effort.
In an earlier videotaped speech, Mr. Prigozhin did not explicitly impugn Mr. Putin, instead casting him as a leader being misled by his officials. But in dismissing the Kremlin’s narrative that the invasion was a necessity for the Russian nation, Mr. Prigozhin went further than anyone in Russia’s security establishment in publicly challenging the wisdom of the war.
“The war wasn’t needed to return Russian citizens to our bosom, nor to demilitarize or denazify Ukraine,” Mr. Prigozhin said, referring to Mr. Putin’s initial justifications for the war. “The war was needed so that a bunch of animals could simply exult in glory.”
Friday’s diatribes deepened the enigma of Mr. Prigozhin’s ambiguous role in Mr. Putin’s system. His Wagner troops, composed of veteran fighters as well as thousands of convicts whom Mr. Prigozhin personally recruited from Russian prisons, proved key in capturing the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in May after a monthslong battle.
But, during the battle for Bakhmut, Mr. Prigozhin also emerged as a populist political figure, excoriating Russia’s military leadership for corruption. His angry recordings and videos posted to the Telegram messaging network cast top military and Kremlin officials as unaware and uncaring of the struggles of regular Russian soldiers.
So far, Mr. Putin has not reined in Mr. Prigozhin, even as Mr. Putin’s security forces have jailed or fined thousands of Russians for criticizing the military or opposing the war. Some people who know Mr. Putin have said they believe that he still sees Mr. Prigozhin as a loyal servant applying needed pressure on a sprawling military apparatus. Others theorized that the Kremlin had orchestrated Mr. Prigozhin’s tirades against Mr. Shoigu, the defense minister, to deflect blame from Mr. Putin himself.
But Friday’s statements complicated the picture, with Mr. Prigozhin going after not just Mr. Shoigu but also unnamed “oligarchs” around Mr. Putin, while casting the entire official rhetoric around the invasion as a sham. He said there was “nothing out of the ordinary” in Ukraine’s military posture on the eve of the February 2022 invasion — challenging the Kremlin’s justification that Ukraine was on the verge of attacking Russian-backed separatist territory in Ukraine’s east.
