Russia’s Wagner Group leader will be killed by Putin or lead another coup within 6 months, expert says
- ‘Everyone knows what they [the Russians] do with ‘traitors,’ Christo Grozev, a journalist with the highly respected investigative outlet Bellingcat, said
- Yevgeny Prigozhin led the aborted Wagner mutiny in an attempt to topple Russian military leaders he had been feuding with over the war in Ukraine
The leader of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group will either end up dead or will lead another coup against Moscow within six months, a journalist said.
Christo Grozev, a journalist with the highly respected investigative outlet Bellingcat, said that he was not surprised to see Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny take place in June.
“I said last January that Prigozhin would turn on Putin within six months – and it just fit within my time frame,” he told Britain’s Financial Times.
He said that his suspicions were sparked by the fact that there was an increase in telephone traffic between Russia’s senior military, per data acquired by Bellingcat.
“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin went on TV and called Prigozhin a traitor”, Grozev said. “Everyone knows what they do with ‘traitors,’ and Putin hasn’t done that. He wants to see him dead. He can’t do that yet. In six months, Prigozhin will either be dead, or there will be a second coup. I’m agnostic between the two, but I can’t see neither of these happening”.
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Prigozhin led the aborted Wagner mutiny in an attempt to topple Russian military leaders that he had been feuding for months over the war in Ukraine.