Arrest ordered for Wagner chief accused of urging ‘armed mutiny’

Russian President Vladimir Putin is now addressing the nation as the mercenary revolt gathers pace.

Yevgeny Prigozhin said early Saturday that he and his fighters had effectively taken control of Rostov-on-Don, the southern Russian city where the headquarters for the war in Ukraine are based.

In a video posted to his social media, Prigozhin threatened to blockade the city and head for Moscow unless Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff, come to see him in Rostov.

NBC News has not verified the claims, but video posted to social media shows armored vehicles on the city’s streets.

Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said his forces were in control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don Saturday morning. NBC News has not verified that claim, but video posted to social media shows armored vehicles on the city's streets.

Russia's defense ministry issued a direct appeal to Wagner mercenaries, urging them to abandon a revolt that appeared to have moved into the southern Russian city of Rostov.

"You were tricked into Prigozhin's criminal gamble and participation in an armed insurgency," the ministry said in a post on Telegram early Saturday.

"We guarantee everyone's safety," it added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to make a televised address to the nation soon, state-run media TASS reported.

A Kremlin spokesperson had earlier said that Putin was being continually briefed of the situation around Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and that “necessary measures are being taken.”

Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner private military contractor who called for an armed rebellion aimed at ousting Russia’s defense minister, confirmed in a video that he and his troops have reached Rostov-on-Don.

The city is home to the Russian military headquarters that oversees the fighting in Ukraine.

Prigozhin has called Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu “scum” and “a traitor” many times and accused him of not supplying his men with ammunition in Ukraine and deliberately starving them of weapons. The tensions are real and profound, a senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News. 

Jealousy and a desire to please Russian President Vladimir Putin have fueled much of the conflict. Wagner Group emerged onto the scene after the 2014 Russian takeover of Crimea, a former Wagner fighter who was one of the early recruits told NBC News. Seizing Crimea was relatively easy and accomplished with little Ukrainian resistance or American pushback. When Russia tried to continue that 2014 offensive in the east of Ukraine, the Ukrainian resistance was far more intense.  

Prigozhen, who already had experience doing “special jobs” for the Kremlin including hacking and disinformation campaigns to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, proposed the creation an off-the-books army, PMC Wagner. The new force allowed the fighting in Donbas to continue without forcing Russia to implement an unpopular military draft. The new force was marginally successful. When Wagner fighters were killed, they were secretly flown back to remote parts of Russia for burial. 

Wagner next deployed in Syria, where Putin wanted an off-the-books force to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad without sending body bags home that people could see. Prigozhen rapidly expanded his operations in Syria, according to the former Wagner fighter, who fought in both in Donbas and Syria and knew Prigozhen personally, describing him as “extremely smart, decisive and ruthless.” 

In Syria, Wagner fighters developed a reputation for brutality, with a signature style of executing its members accused of disloyalty: beating them to death with a sledgehammer. The sledgehammer is now the group’s unofficial symbol. After Syria, Wagner became an established force with an organization and a cohesive command.  

The group then moved into Africa, particularly the lawless Central African Republic, to make money from gold and blood diamonds. Reporting by NBC News indicates that Wagner effectively controls the Central African Republic and extracts about half a billion dollars a year in gold, diamond and rare timber from the country. Flush with money and troops (many of them freed convicts), Prigozhin has become increasingly confident, aggressive and some say arrogant. 

He publicly taunts Russian defense officials and contends that only his men can win tough battles in Ukraine, such as in the city of Bakhmut, where he says the Russian military failed. It would not be surprising if Russian commanders, as Prigozhen claims, cut him off from arms and funding to weaken a rival. Now, Prigozhin says that Russian forces opened fire on Wagner troops in Ukraine and tried to kill them en masse. Prighozen, enraged, announced that he was marching to Moscow to seek “justice.” The FSB, Russia main intelligence agency, accuses him of treason. 

The National Anti-Terrorism Committee, which is part of the Federal Security Services, or FSB, charged Prigozhin with calling for an armed rebellion, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

The FSB urged Wagner’s contract soldiers to arrest Prigozhin and refuse to follow his “criminal and treacherous orders.”

It called his statements a “stab in the back to Russian troops” and said they amounted to fomenting armed conflict.

The messaging app Telegram isn't huge in the U.S., but it is the go-to for many in Russia — including government officials who often make announcements on it.

And with Russia's government having cracked down on independent media, it's also a way for people to disseminate and consume information they wouldn't otherwise have access to.

The app was first launched in 2013 and briefly banned by Russia's government in 2018. It later reversed course after the ban did little to stop the app's use or popularity.

The leader of the mercenary Wagner Group is in "open insurrection," and the stakes could be huge not only for Ukraine, which is fighting a Russian invasion, but for the West as well, retired U.S. Army general Barry McCaffrey said.

"This will be of enormous interest, not just to Ukrainians, because it will obviously affect the ground and air war in Ukraine," McCaffrey said on MSNBC. "But at the end of the day, we don’t like — we, the U.S., the European Union, NATO — don’t like a nuclear-armed country involved in civil war."

“Prigozhin is not a step up from Putin, he’s just another gangster,” McCaffrey said.

McCaffrey said on “The 11th Hour” that it remains to be seen whether Russia’s security service FSB arrest Prigozhin, but he said that Prigozhin is likely serious about the challenge.

“This guy is going after the senior leadership of the Russian armed forces — they’re Putin’s people,” McCaffrey said. “He’s not claiming he was ordered to do it. It’s an open insurrection.”

A senior U.S. military official told NBC News that he does not believe Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner group, is attempting a coup against Putin at this stage, but rather an attempt to remove Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

Wagner’s troop strength is difficult to estimate. A number that is often used (and sometimes used by Wagner) is 25,000, although other estimates are as high as 50,000 and as low as 15,000.

A U.S. military think tank's assessment Friday of what it says is a military rebellion in Russia gives private forces little chance of succeeding against troops loyal to the government's Ministry of Defense.

Washington D.C.'s nonpartisan Institute for the Study of War, which has been following the war in Ukraine closely, found no pathways to success for the mercenary group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin as it challenges government troops.

"Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin appears to have launched an armed rebellion on June 23 to force a leadership change within the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) which is unlikely to succeed," the institute said.

Prigozhin may be overestimating his chances, according to the think tank, which counts two generals, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, on its board.

Prigozhin's 25,000 troops have been instrumental in Ukraine, and he may have believed Putin would back him, the institute said, when that seems unlikely.

At the same time, Prigozhin's group does not have the "independent access" to the ordinance and supplies necessary to win, the think tank said. And support he may have counted on from within the military, including from some key leaders does not appear to be forthcoming, the institute said.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC News that the Wagner Group activities amount to a "worst case scenario" for the Russian government.

“The Russians have turned against each other," Castro said in a text message. "It’s the worst case scenario for Russia because they’re on the brink of an attempted coup and Putin is likely losing an informal army that’s he’s heavily relied upon in his invasion of Ukraine."

Prigozhin is "a ruthless, power hungry leader who has taken advantage of the fact that Putin needs him in the war against Ukraine," Castro added. "He has feigned support for Putin while directing his ire at Russia’s military leaders. But he knows that if he can win control of the Russian military by turning soldiers against their own leadership he will be in a good position to topple Putin.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group who has been now accused of calling for an armed conflict in Russia, was once a catering business owner so known for government events he was called “Putin’s chef”

Prigozhin, 61, is a Russian oligarch who has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department — including in 2019 for efforts to influence the 2018 U.S. presidential election, and also previously for the 2016 election.

The Wagner Group, which Russia calls a “private military company” had been founded in 2014 but it wasn’t until September of 2022 that Prigozhin admitted that he founded it, Reuters has reported. He previously denied it.

One of the wealthiest men in Russia, Prigozhin financed the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based internet troll farm. He was among 13 Russians and three Russian companies indicted in the U.S. in 2018 on criminal charges related to election interference activities.

Read the full story here.

Google's news service became unavilable in Russia on Friday, according to an analysis from NetBlocks, a digital watchdog organization that tracks internet outages.

Citing his close ties to Putin, efforts to interfere in U.S. elections and mercenary operations across the globe, the House voted unanimously in December 2020 to condemn Prigozhin and his Wagner Group.

The non-binding resolution denounced Prigozhin and "affiliated entities that pose a threat to the democratic values, democratic institutions, and security of the United States and its allies and partners."

Written by then-Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the resolution passed by voice vote.

More recently, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., introduced companion bills that would direct the State Department to designate the Wagner Group as a foreign terrorist organization. Neither chamber has acted on those measures.

Alexander Vindman, the former National Security Council director of European affairs and a key witness in then-President Donald Trump's first impeachment, is live-tweeting what he refers to as an "insurrection."

In particular, he has focused on the effort to control the southern military district's headquarters and what that means strategically for the Russian military and the Wagner Group.

The apparent crisis in Russia following claims by influential mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin came after 485 days of open warfare in Ukraine in which his Wagner Group has played a visible role.

Russia invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked attack on Feb. 24, 2022. So far, Russia has controlled or has forces in the eastern and southern parts of the country, according to a United Kingdom Defense Ministry situation report distributed Friday.

Ukrainian officials said that Friday night its forces shot down 13 cruise missiles fired by Russian forces.

Heavy fighting was happening around Bilogorivka in the Luhansk oblast; in Severne and Avdiivka, and in Marinka, which are in Donetsk oblast, officials said.

The Wagner Group has been involved in fighting in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. There was more fighting in that region Friday, Ukrainian officials said.

Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in May threatened to pull his forces from the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in a dispute over ammunition.

Prigozhin eventually reversed course after he said that Russian officials had promised his mercenary group the ammunition he sought.

But he had launched a furious, expletive-laden tirade against Russia’s military leadership.

“I am withdrawing the units of PMC Wagner from Bakhmut because, in the absence of ammunition, they are doomed to senseless death,” he said in the threat.

The video was accompanied by a statement addressed to the head of the Russian general staff, the Defense Ministry and President Vladimir Putin.

Generals in the Russian military released videos in an attempt to urge Wagner Group troops to lay down their arms "before it's too late."

Gen. Sergey Surovikin, who led all Russian forces in Ukraine until January, called Prigozhin an "enemy" who is "only waiting for the domestic political situation to worsen in our country," in a video released online. Russian soldiers and Wagner mercenaries, meanwhile, "are of the same blood," he added.

Those marching on Russia needed to "obey the will and order of the popularly elected president of the Russian Federation, stop the columns, return them to their permanent deployment points and concentration areas, solve all problems only by peaceful means," Surovikin said.

In another video posted online, Gen. Vladimir Alekseev, a deputy chief of the general staff, characterized the alleged actions as a "stab in the back of the country and the president."

He said that he had fought alongside them since 2014 and insisted they come to their senses.

"This is a coup d’état,” he said.

The two top leaders of the powerful U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday night called developments involving opposing factions of Russian fighters "significant."

In a joint statement, committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Virginia, and Vice Chairman Marco Rubio, R-Florida, said they're tracking unfolding events in Russia.

"We are closely monitoring what appears to be a significant internal conflict among Russian forces," the duo said. "We are in touch with the Intelligence Community and Administration as this situation unfolds.”

Michael McFaul, ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, said Friday that President Vladimir Putin may be starting to lose his grip on the nation's levers of power.

After Russia accused powerful paramilitary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin of attempting a coup — with Prigozhin vowing to avenge any casualties at the hands of Russian troops — McFaul said Putin has fallen a long way from the height of his power, just last year, in the days and weeks before his oft-repelled invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

"Putin was in a strong position both at home and abroad on 2/23/2022," McFaul tweeted Friday night. "He has thrown it all away with his disastrous invasion of Ukraine."

McFaul, now a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, was an adviser to Obama on Russia from 2009 to 2012 and ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. He's also been an NBC News analyst.

The invasion saw many Russians sour on Putin and war. Then Prigozhin put the deaths of 2,000 of his fighters on military leaders, sparking "another blow to his power," McFaul said of Putin Friday.

"Today's fighting between Russian armed forces is just another signal of his growing weakness," the former ambassador said.

The chief of the mercenary organization Wagner Group claimed on Telegram that Russian military leaders had ordered an air attack on his troops as they marched back into their homeland in revolt.

Another air attack targeted civilians, he later alleged. NBC News has not confirmed the allegations, and Prigozhin's claims are historically difficult to confirm and often made without evidence.

Nevertheless, his rhetoric on his popular Telegram channel continued to put Russia's military leaders on blast for all the Russians who died in the Ukraine war.

"We are preventing the criminals from saving their asses, the criminals that annihilated around 100,000 Russian soldiers — Gerasimov and Shoigu,” he said, referring to Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian general staff, and Sergei Shoigu, the minister of defense.

An American official said the U.S. is closely monitoring the situation in Russia, and is concerned because there could be massive instability in a nuclear-armed nation. The official declined to characterize what exactly is occurring in Russia.

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation, however, the White House National Security Council said.

“We are monitoring the situation and will be consulting with allies and partners on these developments,” National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge said.

Russian leaders aren't taking any chances.

In response to the threats made by Prigozhin, who leads the paramilitary organization Wagner Group, a Russian law enforcement officer said that “security measures” had been strengthened in Moscow, according to TASS, a Russian state-owned news agency.

“All the most important facilities, state authorities and transport infrastructure facilities have been taken under enhanced protection,” TASS quoted the officer as saying.

Russian leaders did not mince words in response to Prigozhin's claims that he was marching on Russia. They said they were investigating Putin's close confidante for "armed mutiny."

The FSB, the security service that succeeded the Soviet Union's KGB, is investigating the mercenary chief for allegedly stoking a coup in Russia.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said Prigozhin allegations were falsehoods aimed at creating discord within Russia. The statement was reiterated on Russian television, which was interrupted by a newscast on the situation.

“All the messages and videos spread in social networks on behalf of E. Prigozhin about the alleged ‘strike’ of the Russian Ministry of Defence against the ‘rear camps of the Wagner PMC’ are untrue and are an informational provocation,” the Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

The Kremlin, which typically ignores Prigozhin's controversial statements, also joined the fray early on Saturday in Moscow.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said numerous military and law enforcement agencies are continuing to brief Putin on the situation and added that “necessary measures are being taken."

The FSB released a statement accusing Prigozhin of “a ‘stab in the back’ of Russian servicemen” and calling for an armed civil conflict.

The leader of Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary organization, claimed in a series of audio messages posted to Telegram on Friday that the Russian military he and his soldiers had fought alongside in Ukraine had attacked them.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary group vowed to stop the “evil” of the military leadership and claimed he and his troops had turned their back on the war in Ukraine. Instead they were entering Russia to take on the country's military command who he believed were responsible.

He asked that no one resist his soldiers and warned that “if something stands in our way, we will destroy everything that will try to stop us.”

“At this moment in time we have crossed in all places the state borders ... Right now we are entering Rostov,” he said, referring to a city in the south of Russia.

Prigozhin said that Russian forces had attacked his troops with artillery and helicopters and accused Defense Minister Shoigu of traveling to Rostov to oversee the attack. The Russian government vehemently denied Prigozhin's claims.