Free Republic

New documents that suggest Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin offered to give Russian troop positions to Kyiv puts further strain on his relations with Moscow. The Kremlin on Monday attempted to downplay an explosive new report suggesting Wagner Group mercenary leader Yevegeny Prigozhin told a Ukrainian intelligence service that he would give them the positions of Russian troops in exchange for withdrawing from the besieged city of Bakhmut. “It looks like another duck,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, employing a Russian idiom for a hoax or a media stunt, lamenting that a “respected news organization” would buy into it....

The head of the Wagner mercenary forces offered to help Ukraine by giving up Russian troop locations if Kyiv withdrew its forces from Bakhmut, leaked Pentagon documents suggest. Yevgeny Prigozhin in January said he would tell the intelligence service the positions of Vladimir Putin's soldiers, the Washington Post reported, citing the leaked 'Jack the Dripper' papers. Ukraine rejected the offer amid distrust of Prigozhin. -snip- The leaked documents also revealed that in January Volodymyr Zelensky plotted to 'conduct strikes in Russia' while moving ground troops into enemy territory to 'occupy unspecified Russian border cities'. In a February meeting with Deputy...

In late January, with his mercenary forces dying by the thousands in a fight for the ruined city of Bakhmut, Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin made Ukraine an extraordinary offer. Prigozhin said that if Ukraine’s commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, he would give Kyiv information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them. Prigozhin conveyed the proposal to his contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, with whom he has maintained secret communications during the course of the war, according to previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord. (snip) Other...