Mercenary Leader: “We Are Patriots Of Our Motherland”

The New York Times reports:

Despite years of creeping Kremlin control over the internet, the mercenary tycoon Yevgeny V. Prigozhin continued to comment live on Saturday through videos, audio recordings and statements posted on the messaging app Telegram. His remarkable continued access to a public platform amid a crisis demonstrated both the limits of official restrictions and the rise of Telegram as a powerful mode of communication since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022.

He said that the Russian leader was “deeply mistaken” in describing the Wagner paramilitary forces as traitorous. “We are patriots of our motherland,” Mr. Prigozhin said. In his messaging, Mr. Prigozhin has tried to strike populist themes that would appeal to rank-and-file Russian soldiers, assailing the Russian military leadership for covering up the true scale of losses in Ukraine and saying that Russia could not go on mired in “corruption, lies and bureaucracy.”

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