- Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has prompted fears of an impending coup in Russia.
- Russian civilians and officials are imploring troops to keep their focus on Ukraine amid the panic.
As chaos envelops Moscow amid unprecedented infighting among the nation's regular and irregular commanders, Russian civilians and officials alike are imploring the country's troops to keep the real "enemy" — Ukraine — top of mind.
Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin triggered panic on Friday as he castigated Russia's "evil" defense ministry in a series of video addresses and social media statements which escalated his longstanding public contempt for Russia's military leadership into plausible coup fodder.
The Putin ally, whose mercenary troops helped secure the besieged Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in a bloody battle earlier this year, appeared to openly encourage taking up arms against Russia's defense ministry after Russia's armed forces allegedly conducted a missile strike that killed a number of his fighters — a claim which the Russian military has firmly denied.
Prigozhin insisted that those responsible for the deaths of his men should be "punished" as he pledged to "destroy" anyone who tries to resist his efforts to seek "justice," according to a translation of his comments.
Up to this point, the Russian government has seemingly tolerated Prigozhin's rants and allowed him to skirt the country's strict war-time censorship policies, which directly forbid the types of incendiary statements Prigozhin has frequently made about Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, who have spearheaded Russia's 16-month war effort in Ukraine.
But Prigozhin's escalation Friday, which included casting doubt on Russia's purported reasons for invading Ukraine in the first place, appeared to be the last straw for Russian authorities, as Russia's Federal Security Service promptly initiated a criminal case against the notorious mercenary leader.
As fears of a potential gang war mount between Wagner and the Russian military, several Russian Telegram channels are reposting the same message geared toward Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, according to Samuel Bendett, an advisor at the Center for Naval Analyses.
"Brothers! Everyone who holds a weapon at the line of contact - remember: your enemy is across from you, keep him at gunpoint, Moscow will sort this all out without us," the statement reads." There is nothing more important than Russia."
The Russian defense ministry, meanwhile, also attempted to refocus attention on the fight in Ukraine in a Friday Telegram post.
"The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue to carry out combat tasks on the line of contact with the [Armed Forces of Ukraine] in the area of the special military operation," the agency said, referring to the conflict in Ukraine.
Fears that Prigozhin could try to win more Russian troops to his side are not entirely unfounded, according to Simon Miles, an assistant professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy and a historian of the Soviet Union and US-Soviet relations.
"One thing which should worry the Kremlin is that [Prigozhin] has always been very popular with rank-and-file soldiers and junior officers in the military proper," Miles told Insider. "What does that do for command and control when the Ukrainians are probing along a wide front? Probably not good things."
Multiple Russian generals took to Telegram on Friday to appeal directly to Wagner troops, including General Sergey Surovikin, who called on Wagner leadership to "stop their armored columns" and handle the dispute peacefully, according to a translation by Bendett.
—Samuel Bendett (@sambendett) June 23, 2023
Another general invoked fears of a civil war in speaking to Wagner members: "There is no worse image for our country than what is happening now. We did not hit Wagner positions. This is stab in Russia's back," he said, per Bendett.