Russia’s hired mercenary force, the Wagner Group, was hired by the West and Ukraine to lead a coup against Putin that will not succeed, said an American military analyst..“Let’s be clear, this is an armed insurrection,” Scott Ritter told former Fox News personality Judge Napolitano on the judge’s YouTube channel..“[It is] a coup d'etat being orchestrated by Yevgeny Prigozhin using the combat forces of a private military contractor to forcibly remove the constitutionally-mandated and instituted government of Russia.”.Prigozhin, 62 leads the Wagner Group, a mercenary force hired by Russia for engagement in the war against Ukraine, including the engagement in Bakhmut..He claimed he has taken over a Russia military installation at Rustov-on-Don in the southern part of the country and that he is marching on Moscow to meet with defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Vladmir Putin..“We are patriots of our Motherland, we fought and are fighting,” Prigozhin said in audio messages. “And no one is going to turn themselves in at the request of the president, the FSB [Russian security], or anyone else.”.Putin had harsh words for the “armed rebellion” in an address to citizens on national TV, saying it was “a stab in the back of our country and our people.”.“Everyone who deliberately embarked on the path of betrayal, who prepared an armed rebellion, embarked on the path of blackmail and terrorist methods will suffer inevitable punishment and answer both before the law and before our people,” Putin said..“Our armed forces and other state bodies have been given the necessary orders. Additional antiterrorist measures are now being introduced in Moscow and a number of other regions.”.As tanks rolled into defensive positions around Moscow on Saturday, the head of Wagner announced he was stopping his advance on the capital city to "avoid bloodshed.".Ritter, 61, is a frequent guest on Napolitano’s program. The author, pundit, former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, former United Nations Special Commission weapons inspector with a bachelor’s degree in Soviet history..“The Ukrainian intelligence service, they had a series of covert cells that were being positioned in Moscow that were uncovered by the FSB, Russian security, and rounded up. It appears that these cells were supposed to be in place in Moscow, so that as Prigozhin began to move towards Moscow, they would carry out a series of attacks, explosions, terrorist events that would terrorize the Russian people, reinforce the notion that Putin was an ineffective leader, and therefore, the people of Moscow would welcome Wagner with open arms,” Ritter explained..“This is a concerted effort between Wagner, Ukrainian Intelligence Service, and their western sponsors, in particular, the British..They recruited Prigozhin…to collapse the government of Vladimir Putin. I personally believe that he won't succeed.”.Ritter said CIA involvement was also likely, and that reports that Putin had fled to St. Petersburg, and that the president of Belarus had also fled were false..“We have an information war being played right now in social media. It has been hijacked by pro-Ukrainian, pro-British, pro-CIA channels…creating chaos and anarchy in the information spectrum, who sow confusion,” Ritter said..“The idea is to create the perception of a government in collapse. We have to treat almost everything we hear on social media with a heavy grain of salt.”.In a public video in the spring, Prigozhin pointed towards bodies of his fallen men and criticized Russia for not arming him adequately for the job. ."These are someone's fathers and someone's sons," Prigozhin said. "The scum that doesn't give us ammunition will eat their guts in hell.”.Ritter said Prigozhin was identifying a legitimate problem and how Putin responded may have contributed to the apparent insurrection attempt..“Putin had to call Shoigu and Prigozhin into his office and read them the riot act and tell them to knock it off, stop this cease and desist. But in a reflection of perhaps the legitimacy of Prigozhin’s position, he told Shoigu to take a back seat and appointed General Sergei Surovikin, ‘General Armageddon,’ to be the principal point of contact,” Ritter explained..“Shoigu helped create something called the Ministry of Emergency Response in Russia. And this ministry has succeeded beyond anybody's wildest expectations. So the idea that he's a hack is absurd in the extreme.”
