Wagner boss blasts Russia’s elite following Moscow drone attack

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force has again criticized Russia’s military and political elite after the drone attack on Moscow that injured two people, damaged property and left some furious that the Kremlin had not better protected the capital.

In an expletive-laced statement posted to Telegram by his press office on Tuesday, Yevgeny Prigozhin — whose mercenaries have played a key role in Ukraine’s war — blamed the drone strike on out-of-contact officials in the affluent suburb. lived in Moscow. Rublyovka.

“You, the Defense Ministry, have done nothing to launch an offensive,” Prigozhin said in the statement.

“How dare you let the drones reach Moscow?”

“And what do ordinary people do when drones with explosives crash into their windows?”

Prigozhin turned his anger on the powerful residents of the posh Rublyovka neighborhood in Moscow’s western suburbs, speaking of the “scum” and “swines” who sat still while Moscow was attacked.

In a Telegram post after the attack on Tuesday, Alexander Khinshtein, a prominent member of Russia’s parliament from the ruling United Russia bloc, said three of eight drones had been shot down over three Rublyovka villages, one of which was just 10 minutes away. driving is. from the residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Novo-Ogaryovo.

Rublyovka, a patchwork of elite gated communities in the forests west of Moscow, once home to some of the world’s highest real estate prices, is home to much of Russia’s political, business and cultural elite. Former President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin are said to own homes in Rublyovka, along with many of Russia’s wealthiest businessmen.

Wagner boss Prigozhin, known for his blunt and often foul language, has repeatedly portrayed the residents of Rublyovka as an elite ignorant and insufficiently committed to the war in Ukraine and has blamed the top of the Russian government of Russia’s failures on the battlefield.

Russian military blogger Igor Girkin — who was found guilty by a Dutch court of murdering 298 people who died when flight MH17 was shot down over Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine in 2014 — also criticized residents of Rublyovka on Tuesday, he said , “never thought of the country”.

He also chided Putin for continuing to claim the war in Ukraine was a “special military operation” despite drone strikes on Russia’s capital, the Institute for War Studies (ISW). wrote on Wednesday.

Following the drone strikes, Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Russia’s Chechnya province, urged the Kremlin to declare martial law nationwide and use all its resources in Ukraine “to drive that terrorist gang away.

” to fade”.

The ISW, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said Kadyrov also warned European countries against supplying weapons to Ukraine, stating that “if they continue to supply Ukraine with weapons, they will not have the weapons necessary to defend themselves when Russia ‘knocks on their door’”.

Some Kremlin viewers noted that Putin’s calm response to the drone strike contrasted sharply with angry statements from Russian hawks and seems to reflect his belief that the Russian public will not be upset by the attack.

Putin said it was clear that Moscow’s air defenses need to be improved against what he described as Ukrainian “terrorism”.

Justifiable defense

Russia’s envoy to the United States said on Wednesday that Washington was encouraging Kiev to carry out such attacks by not speaking out against the drone attack on Moscow.

The White House said it did not support attacks in Russia and was still gathering information about the incident.

“What are these attempts to hide behind the phrase that they ‘gather information’?” That is what the Russian ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said in remarks on the Telegram messaging channel.

“This is an encouragement to Ukrainian terrorists,” he said.

While not commenting specifically on the drone strikes in Moscow, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said on Tuesday that Ukraine has the right to attack targets on Russian territory in self-defense.

“Ukraine has a legitimate right to defend itself,” Cleverly said at a press conference with his Estonian counterpart Margus Tsahkna in the Estonian capital Tallinn.

“Of course it has the legitimate right to do this within its own borders, but it also has the right to use force outside its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to use force in Ukraine itself,” he said. “So legitimate military targets beyond one’s own border are part of Ukraine’s self-defense. And we have to recognize that,” he added.

Ukrainian troops shelled a Russian town close to the border for the third time in a week on Wednesday, damaging buildings and setting vehicles on fire, the region’s governor said on Wednesday.

According to Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, at least one person was injured during the artillery attack on Shebekino.

A Ukrainian drone also caused a fire at the Afipsky oil refinery in southern Russia on Wednesday, the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region said.

The fire was quickly extinguished and there were no casualties, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said on the Telegram messaging app. The Afipsky refinery is located not far from the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, near another refinery that has been attacked several times this month.