Wagner Group Army Boss Wants Defense Minister Shoigu To Be Tried, Military Chief Of Staff Replaced By General Armageddon

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Yevgeny Prigozhin. (Wikimedia Commons/Government of the Russian Federation)

JAKARTA - The founder of the Russian Wagner Group's mercenaries Yevgeny Prigozhin warned his country could face a revolution similar to the year 1917 and lose the conflict in Ukraine, unless elites are serious about fighting.

Prigozhin said there was an optimistic view that the West would tire of war and China would broker a peace deal, but he did not believe much in that interpretation.

Instead, he said, Ukraine was preparing for a counter-attack aimed at pushing Russian troops back to their borders before 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. Ukraine will try to surround Bakhmut, focus on fierce fighting in the east and attacking Crimea, he added.

"Most likely, this scenario won't be good for Russia so we need to prepare for a difficult war," he said in an interview posted on his Telegram channel.

"We are in such a condition that we can lose Russia - that's the main problem... We need to impose a military emergency."

Prigozhin said that the nickname "Koki Putin" is a stupid nickname because he can't cook and has never been a chef, and insinuated that "Putin's carpentry" might be a more precise nickname.

"They could immediately give me the nickname - Putin Meat Worker, and everything will be fine," he said.

Prigozhin further said that if ordinary Russian people continued to return their children to the zinc coffin, while the children of the elites "dried" in the sun, Russia would face chaos like the 1917 revolution that caused civil war.

"This division can end like in 1917 with a revolution," he said.

"First of all, the soldiers will rise, and after that - their loved ones will rise. There are already tens of thousands of them, relatives of those killed. And maybe there will be hundreds of thousands, we can't avoid that," explained Prigozhin.

Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for comment regarding Prigozhin's remarks.

Prigozhin criticized Russia's post-Soviet policy against Ukraine, calling the implementation of what the Kremlin called "special military operations" unclear, contradictory and confusing.

According to him, Russia's military leadership has "disrupted" repeatedly during the war. The goal declared to demilitarize Ukraine has failed, said Prigozhin.

Prigozhin also said Soviet leader Josef Stalin would not accept the failure. A cross-border attack on Russia's Belgorod region indicated the failure of military leadership, he said, and warned Ukraine would seek to attack further into Russia.

He considered that Russia needed to mobilize more troops and direct the economy exclusively for war.

"Wagner has recruited about 50 thousand inmates during the war, of which about 20 percent died. About the same number of his contract soldiers, 10,000, have died," said Prigozhin.

In Bakhmut, said Prigozhin, Ukraine had suffered 50,000-70,000 injuries and 50,000 people were killed.

Prigozhin said Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu should be replaced by Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev. Meanwhile, General Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov must be replaced by Sergei Surovikin, nicknamed "General Armageddon" by Russian media.

Asked about his political kredo, he replied, "I love my homeland, I serve Putin, Shoigu must be tried and we will continue to fight."