One of Putin's confidants - "his former chef" and the head of Russia's Wagner group - oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin has claimed that he is the only hero of the day and is trying to undermine the position of the Russian Ministry of Defense. This is not his first stunt, he has been actively using his private military company for political propaganda since the beginning of the war. This time, however, it also puzzled government critics in the Russian audience - refusing to mention the merits of the regular Russian army in connection with this victory was odd.
Later, Russian official sources reported on a secret maneuver by the airborne division of the Russian Armed Forces, which attacked Ukrainian positions and blocked the city from the north and south. Thus, Operation Soledad was carried out by a diverse group of forces acting in coordination to effectively solve combat tasks. A critical breakthrough in the attack came precisely after the involvement of the Russian armed forces, as well as the air force and artillery squadrons. The soldiers of the Wagner group are mostly foot soldiers - "storm troopers" and were obviously not able to gain control over the city by themselves. A modern battle involves the use of a wide variety of combat units, it is not a bank heist or a gang shootout. Another fun fact is that the Wagner Group actually relies on weapons and military equipment provided by the Department of Defense. Artillery, mortars, tanks - all this is donated by the regular army. From the beginning of the war, however, Prigozhin tried to promote the image of an elite and independent unit for Wagner. So we can now watch how the pseudo-heroic Wagner group, raised by the Russian Ministry of Defense, ungratefully spits in the face of their military partners and tries to claim their merits.
But morals aside, Prigozhin has a solid financial motive to openly defy the Ministry of Defense and claim victory for himself. A Russian oligarch combines his business and war skills to privatize the regional development of various minerals under "liberator of the city" rights. And you'd better hurry, more of Putin's oligarchs will come running soon.
For Prigozhin, the Wagner Group is primarily a business project to obtain exclusively financial goals. He has already used it to control mineral resources in the Central African Republic, and since 2017, Prigozhin's company Euro Pol is (EV RO Pol is) has been engaged in mining and oil production in the Syrian Republic. In 2016, Prigozhin signed a deal with Damascus that secured 25% of the revenue from gas and oil extraction in Syrian fields guarded by his war group, the German business media "Handelsblatt" writes. This Operation Soledad revealed the sheer magnitude of internal conflicts in Russia. Putin will surely have a headache from the dilemma - he needs big players like Prigozhin, but they undermine the propaganda image of a "holy war" (as some Russians call it). Prigozhin, with his apparent rush for money and power and total rejection of ideology, begins to discredit Putin's nationalist course of "denationalization" and "demilitarization" of Ukraine.
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