An investigative journalist explains why Yevgeny Prigozhin is so angry with the military leadership.

The founder and leader of the Russian private military company Wagner has often appeared critical and even angry with the Defense Ministry, the security service FSB, and the intelligence agency GRU on a variety of reasons, accusing them of alleged denial of weapons or ammunition, “coward” or “criminal” decisions, and even bathing in luxury during the war.

Yet there’s a reason Yevgeny Prigozhin has not mentioned at all. According to Christo Grozev, a Bulgaria-born investigative journalist who is among the most informed commentators about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, a group of generals from GRU created a clone of Wagner in order to absorb the governmental funds meant for mercenaries. 

“Unfortunately, in every war there is an outbreak of corruption from either side of the front, as the saying goes ‘the war will write everything off.’ There are frauds of billions [of rubles] going on in Russia. At the beginning of this war, the GRU generals tried to make money on an alternative private military company with the same name, a sort of Wagner-2, staffing it with their relatives in commanding positions, who received the money that the genuine Wagner would otherwise have received during the first phase of war.

The people I’ve spoken to said that 90% of funds had been stolen before reaching the units. An example how this scheme worked is recruiting men who had been killed already,” Grozev said in a video interview for the Russian service of the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty station. 

Rampant corruption is one of the main factors why Russia is losing the war in Ukraine, Grozev believes.

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[video] Two Wagner mercenaries recall how and why they killed Ukrainian children

In his opinion, in spite of numerous assurances that he remained loyal to President Vladimir Putin, in reality Prigozhin is loyal to himself and there are signs that he is building his own political future.

The Wagner leader has confidence in his troops, who have gained extensive combat experience in Ukraine and are ready to follow him everywhere.

“I recently talked to people who work for him, and they said: ‘We do not know where he will go. It is quite possible that he’ll say: let's all march towards the Kremlin, and we’ll do it.’ They don't know what his plan is, but they assume it's possible,” the Bellingcat executive director stated.

Given that the public is deeply disappointed in the Moscow leadership and in Putin personally, there are chances for Prigozhin to find a decent popular support for his political claims, should he decide to march to the Kremlin, influential Russian war correspondents and military analysts agree.