During the mutiny, the founder of the private military company Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, would capture Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Valery Gerasimov. On this subject writing The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing Western officials.
According to the publication’s sources, Prigozhin’s plan involved the capture of Shoigu and Gerasimov during their stay in the Rostov region. However, according to the WSJ, two days before the plan was implemented, the FSB found out about it, and the leader of the “Wagnerians” had to change everything “at the last minute” and organize a “march on Moscow”.
This premature launch of the plan into action is one of the factors that can explain its final failure 36 hours after the start, when Prigogine canceled the “march on Moscow”, which at that time had not even met many resistance, writes the WSJ.
According to the publication’s sources, Western intelligence agencies were also given advance notice of Prigozhin’s plans, which analyzed intercepted emails and satellite images. With
“Western officials said they thought the initial plot had a good chance of succeeding but failed after a leak, forcing Prigozhin to improvise,” the US newspaper said.
According to the intelligence she cites, Prigozhin planned the rebellion based on the certainty that part of the Russian army would join him and rebel against his own commanders.
“According to Western intelligence, preparations included the stockpiling of large quantities of ammunition, fuel and military equipment, including tanks, armored vehicles and advanced mobile air defense systems, in the days leading up to the attack” , indicates the article.
However, according to the WSJ, the leak forced Prigozhin to act sooner than expected. “He managed to capture Rostov. According to Western intelligence, the ease with which Wagner’s troops took the million-plus city, which has a large military airport, suggests that some regular troop commanders may be part of the conspiracy,” he wrote. American newspaper.
She recalls that the head of the National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, announced that the authorities were aware of Prigozhin’s plans and expressed confidence in their deliberate failure. “Concrete information was leaked from the Prigozhin camp about preparations for the rebellion, which was supposed to start from June 22-25,” he told Russian media.
“Western officials have said they believe Prigozhin communicated his intentions to high-ranking officers, possibly including General Sergei Surovikin, commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces. It has not been possible to establish whether Surovikin passed this information to the FSB and how the department became aware of Prigozhin’s plans,” the WSJ summarized.
CNN sources in “European security” declaredthat although Prigogine may have expressed a desire to capture Shoigu and Gerasimov, there is no evidence that he had a “credible” plan to capture them.
Earlier, the New York Times, citing US officials who allegedly received information from US intelligence services, claimsthat Surovikin “knew of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to rebel against Russia’s military rulers” and therefore called on the PMC fighters to stop. The Russian President’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov, commenting on this publication, called it an example of “speculation and rumors”, which, according to him, “there will now be a lot around these events”.
CNN, citing “Western officials,” reported that the extent to which Russian intelligence and senior military officials were aware of Prigozhin’s plans remains unknown. “So far everything is vague… Time will tell exactly what reasons (for Prigogine),” one of the sources said.
Earlier, US media reported that US intelligence got a detailed and accurate picture of Prigozhin’s plans, including advancing PMCs “forward”. But the channel’s sources said the intelligence was so secret that only “selected allies” – such as high-ranking British officials – had access to it, but not representatives of “NATO’s wider circle”.
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