PMC Wagner Prigozhin handed Putin a file that triggered arrests of Russian generals

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late founder of private military company Wagner, could be involved in recent arrests of high-ranking officials at the Russian Defence Ministry, Tsargrad reports with reference to its own source.

During a meeting with Putin, Prigozhin allegedly informed the president about the real state of affairs on the front.

The question about the need to change the leadership of the Defence Ministry arose in December 2022, when Prigozhin made a number of offensive statements. The founder of the PMC used provocative methods to attract attention to the situation. After that, he and Wagner commanders had a meeting with the head of state.

The meeting with Putin took place on 29 June 2023 in the Kremlin. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin invited 35 people from the Wagner leadership and assessed the company's actions on the front.

During the meeting, Prigozhin not only presented his version of the situation to Putin, but also gave him a file with documents about the real state of affairs in the zone of the special military operation. Among other things, Prigozhin allegedly interviewed not only the commanders of Wagner but also representatives of other units of the Russian forces.

A series of detentions of high-ranking Defence Ministry officials began in April with the arrest of Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov. He was detained at his workplace in the case of bribery. In May, Yury Kuznetsov, head of the Russian Defence Ministry's Main Personnel Directorate, was detained.

Within two weeks after Kuznetsov's arrest, Ivan Popov, former commander of the 58th Army of the Russian Armed Forces, and Vadim Shamarin, head of the Main Communications Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces and deputy chief of the General Staff, were also detained. They are accused of embezzlement and bribery respectively.