Speech Of His Victory In Bakhmut Ignored By Government Media, Head Of Wagner Group Boss Says Kremlin Ban

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

JAKARTA - The head of the Wagner Group's mercenaries said he believed senior officials in the Kremlin had banned news of him in state media, warning such a misleading approach would lead to backlash from the Russian people in a few months.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenaries group, is the most striking member of President Vladimir Putin's circle of fame in the 15-month war in Ukraine.

Prigozhin, a restaurant owner who satirized last week that his nickname had to be Putin's "carp (guard, red) instead of Putin's "cooky", seized the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine earlier this month. However, his role in victory was underestimated on state television.

The 61-year-old man has made a name for himself by applying brutal discipline to his mercenaries, using obscene language and prison language to insult top military officials President Putin, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

As a sign of how far Prigozhin is considered to have violated Russia's Putin's taboos, state television ignored Bakhmut's 20-hour fall, not broadcasting Prigozhin's winning speech.

Asked about what appears to be a ban on covering it up in state media, Prigozhin used a series of Russian defamation to make fun of those responsible: "What is forbidden is always sweeter," Reuters reported May 29.

"Wagner is not a piece of slippery soap that bureaucrats usually push everywhere; Wagner is a stabbing, a stimulus that you can't hide," Prigozhin said.

"I'm very sure they have banned (covering)," he said.

"The high-level bureaucrats, the Kremlin towers, are trying to cover everyone's mouths, so they don't talk about Wagner will only give other encouragement to the people," he said.

Such an approach, said Prigozhin, would trigger a backlash from the Russian people.

"In the long term, the long term is two or three months, they will receive a finger slap from people for trying to cover everyone's mouth and ears," Prigozhin explained.

Separately, the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense ignored the explosion of Prigozhin, which appeared to have violated Putin's strict-controlled political system rules since he won the highest position in the Kremlin on the last day of 1999.

The Kremlin, which did not respond to a request for comment, said all "special military operations" objectives in Ukraine would be achieved, although what it said was a proxies war launched by the West against it.

It is known, after Prigozhin claimed victory over Bakhmut, the Kremlin took 10 hours to issue a 36-word statement, congratulating Wagner and the armed forces unit that succeeded in "freezing" Artyomovsk, the Soviet-era name for Bakhmut used by Russia. However, Prigozhin's name was not mentioned.

In an audio message on Sunday, Prigozhin said 72,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died in the Bakhmut "roof pangolin" and about 100,000 to 140,000 Ukrainian soldiers were injured.

Reuters was unable to verify the tally of war accidents from both sides. Neither Ukraine nor Russia published the death toll. However, Kyiv said Russia's losses in Bakhmut were huge, as it was the attack.

Meanwhile, Kyiv also insisted that his troops still control a small part of the strategic city.