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Wagner boss has ‘gone off the rails’ over money, Russian TV presenter says
- Last weekend Yevgeny Prigozhin led his Wagner forces in a short-lived rebellion against Russia’s top military brass, in a huge embarrassment for the Kremlin.
- Russian propagandist Dmitry Kiselev said on his TV show: ‘He thought that he can challenge the defence ministry, the state itself and the president personally’
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A top Russian propagandist on Sunday accused the head of the Wagner mercenary group Wagner of going “off the rails” after receiving billions in public funds, as Moscow’s new narrative takes shape after Wagner’s brief mutiny.
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Last weekend Yevgeny Prigozhin led his Wagner forces in a short-lived rebellion against Russia’s top military brass, in a huge embarrassment for the Kremlin.
“Prigozhin has gone off the rails because of big money,” Dmitry Kiselev, one of the main faces of the Russian propaganda machine, said on his weekly television show on Sunday.
“He thought that he can challenge the defence ministry, the state itself and the president personally.”
Kiselev said that Wagner’s operations in Syria and Africa had given Prigozhin a feeling of impunity that was later reinforced by his rag-tag forces’ battlefield successes in eastern Ukraine.
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