Free Republic

The Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has said Russia’s defence ministry concocted false pretences to trick Vladimir Putin into invading Ukraine and said Moscow could have avoided the war entirely. In a half-hour tirade Prigozhin, founder of the notorious Wagner mercenary group, claimed Russia had faced no immediate threat from Ukraine when Putin began his full-scale invasion last year and accused the army’s top brass of deceiving the Russian president for their own personal gain. The extraordinary rant, posted on social media on Friday, was the former caterer’s latest salvo in a long-running spat with defence minister Sergei Shoigu, who Prigozhin...