CNN
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US officials determined as early as January that there was an ongoing internal power struggle between the private military group Wagner and the Russian government, and since then have been gathering and closely monitoring information on the volatile dynamic, according to officials.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stalled earlier this year, top US officials said they saw signs of tensions between the Kremlin and Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. They said they believed these tensions would increase in the coming months.
The officials said their assessments of the situation were derived from intelligence, an indication of how seriously the White House and Pentagon took the potential for a power struggle to cause further instability in the ongoing conflict. .
Prigozhin has also frequently aired his grievances in public, and in recent months has issued a spate of audio and video messages criticizing Moscow’s military leadership, particularly Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the head of the Russian Armed Forces, General Valery Gerasimov.
Russia’s national intelligence service opened a criminal case against Prigozhin after he appeared to cross a red line with the Kremlin on Friday.
Prigozhin, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, vowed retaliation against the country’s military leadership after accusing Russian forces of attacking a Wagner military camp and killing a “large number” of his mercenaries.
Russia’s Defense Ministry denied the claims, calling them an “informational provocation.”
By Friday evening, US President Joe Biden had been briefed on the developing situation in Russia, according to National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge.
In January, a senior White House official said Wagner was becoming a “rival power center for the Russian military and other Russian militaries.” At the time, officials suggested that Prigozhin was working to advance his own interests in Ukraine rather than Russia’s broader goals.
Hear as Wagner’s boss vows revenge for the deadly attack on his camp
The Wagner group, which the West claimed had recruited prison inmates to fight in Ukraine, was making decisions based on “what they’re going to generate for Prigozhin, in terms of positive publicity,” said John Kirby, the council’s strategic communications coordinator. of National Security, in January.
Since then, the White House and other US national security aides have been closely attuned to what one official said was an “ongoing battle” between Prigozhin and the Russian defense ministry.
CNN previously reported that Prigozhin had confronted Putin directly last year about his belief that the war in Ukraine was being mismanaged by top generals who were in charge, according to US officials. At the time, U.S. intelligence officials considered Prigozhin’s meeting significant enough to include him in one of Biden’s daily briefings, sources said.
While it was unclear how Putin reacted to that confrontation, US intelligence officials believed at the time that it was further evidence that Prigozhin, who is not part of the Russian government, was trying to claim their influence as the US looked closely at power structures within the Kremlin. For its part, the Kremlin denied that the officials had criticized the management of the war.
