“Kadyrov allied with Prigozhin. Popcorn time.”
Sounds like it!
Prigozhin and Kadyrov can destabilize the ethnic regions in a flash.
‘Putin’s Chef’ Steps Out of the Shadows
Yevgeny Prigozhin wants to ride the Wagner Group to greater glory.
October 3, 2022
“After years of vehement denials, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, acknowledged last week that he founded the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary outfit that has been deployed around the world, including to Ukraine.
The admission is a sharp departure for Prigozhin, who has sued journalists for linking him to the group, which has been accused of committing gross human rights abuses in Africa, Syria, and Ukraine. The businessman’s efforts to burnish his credentials as a commander comes as Putin is under increasing pressure, with the Russian armed forces plagued by low morale and high casualties, prompting speculation as to future ambitions. Russia’s latest military debacle took place on the Kherson front in southern Ukraine between Sunday and Monday, threatening a mass Ukrainian encirclement of tens of thousands of ill-equipped troops.
Wagnerites tell me they’d vote for him over Putin any time, and it seems to me he smells blood,” Christo Grozev, lead Russia investigator with the open-source investigative group Bellingcat, wrote on Twitter.
In a post on the Russian social networking site VK, Prigozhin claimed he founded the group in 2014 in the early days of the war in eastern Ukraine. “I myself cleaned the old weapons, looked into bulletproof vests,” he wrote. “From that moment … a group of patriots was born.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/03/yevgeny-prigozhin-wagner-group-putin/