Wagner boss 'gone off the rails' over money, says Russian TV
Wagner boss of «going off the rails» after receiving billions in public funds, as Moscow's new narrative takes shape after Wagner's brief mutiny. Last weekend the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led his forces in a short-lived rebellion against Russia's top military brass, in a huge embarrassment for the Kremlin. «Prigozhin has gone off the rails because of big money,» Dmitry Kiselev, one of the main faces of the Russian propaganda machine, said on his weekly television show on Sunday.
«He thought that he can challenge the defence ministry, the state itself and the president personally.» Kisilev said that Wagner's operations in Syria and Africa had given Prigozhin a feeling of impunity that was later reinforced by his rag-tag forces' battlefield successes in eastern Ukraine. Without providing any evidence, Kisilev said Wagner had received more than 858 billion rubles ($9.7 billion) in state funds. In a stunning admission earlier this week, President Vladimir Putin said for the first time that Russian authorities «fully» financed the paramilitary outfit.
Between May 2022 and May 2023, Wagner received more than 86 billion rubles from the Russian state, Putin said. Private mercenary groups are banned under Russian law. Targeted by sanctions from Washington and Brussels, Prigozhin had for years operated in the shadows but has catapulted into the limelight since Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
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