Russian general, gun in hand, urges Wagner Group to stand down: ‘Stop the columns’

Russian military and intelligence officials have issued a series of desperate appeals for Wagner Group fighters not to attack as Moscow braces for a potential struggle with mercenary warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“Prigozhin’s statements and actions effectively constitute calls for an armed civil conflict on Russian territory and a stab in the back of Russian servicemen,” the Russian Federal Security Service said Friday. “We call on the PMC fighter not to commit irreparable mistakes, to stop any force actions against the Russian people, and not to comply with criminal and traitorous orders of Prigozhin, and to take measures on his apprehension.”

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That appeal was just one of several public statements that put Russian senior leaders in the position of trying to stave off a violent confrontation with the man once known as “Putin’s chef,” a reference to Prigozhin’s restaurant businesses. Other prominent military leaders emphasized their concern that the internal crisis would undermine Russian attempts to repel the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

“The enemy is waiting for our internal political situation to aggravate,” said Russian Gen. Sergey Surovikin, who appeared on camera with a rifle on his knee. “Stop the columns and return them to their permanent positions and places of concentration.”

The danger for the Kremlin lies in the fact that Prigozhin’s forces have been fortified by recruits drawn from Russian prisons over the last year — a risky move that President Vladimir Putin authorized in order to mitigate a manpower problem that arose as Russian casualties piled up during the war.

“He has prisoners on his side,” a senior European official told the Washington Examiner. “They don’t want to go [back] to prison. They have been given weapons. They have tasted freedom again, with a weapon in hand. It was playing with fire when they started to … recruit prisoners to fight against Ukraine.”

Prigozhin’s public relations team dismissed the appeal with a jab at Surovikin’s role in Russia’s loss of Kherson last fall.

“All the generals who, with shaky hands, appeal to [Wagner] to stop, have actually signed their own verdict,” the Wagner Group declared, according to a War Translated project. “There will be a tribunal. Surovikin will answer for the surrender of Kherson.”

Those statements have lent credibility to Prigozhin’s stated intention to use force against Russian defense authorities.

“The evil that the military leadership of the country brings must be stopped,” Prigozhin said earlier Friday. “There are 25,000 of us, and we are going to look into why there’s total lawlessness in the country.”

Prigozhin has denied any intention to conduct a coup, calling his actions “a march for justice” against corrupt defense officials instead of an attempt to overthrow Putin. That was a risk Putin and his associates recognized in advance.

“Prigozhin created an army, achieved success in the war, got the right to say things that no one else can say,” an unnamed Russian official told the Moscow Times. “And now, he felt like a messiah. And all the way, not once did he fall off the horse. … That is the result.”

The very causalities that forced Putin to empower Prigozhin could make it difficult to put down a rebellion if the two sides come to blows.

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“The problem [for Putin] is that Russians don’t have very good forces to oppose them,” the senior European official said. “It’s not Turkey a few years ago when there were members of the military who thought they would do a coup, because Turkey’s military hadn’t been exhausted in a war against a very strong enemy.”

The source continued, “If the fight starts, it’s going to be interesting.”