The Prigozhin Hotel will captivate Shoigu and Gerasimov

The head of PMC “Wagner” Yevgeny Prigozhin, during his rebellion, planned to capture Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov during their visit to Rostov-on-Don. This was reported by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday with reference to unnamed representatives of Western countries.

According to the publication, Prigozhin had to change his plans and improvise, since the FSB found out about his plan. As a result, he started a rebellion earlier than planned, which may have been one of the factors in the failure of the armed uprising.

It is confirmed that the FSB learned about the plan to capture Shoigu and Gerasimov two days before its intended implementation. Exact dates are not named. Prigozhin began his speech, which he called the “march of justice”, on the evening of June 23, announcing on the same day that Shoigu and Gerasimov had “run away” from Rostov. Whether they were really in Rostov-on-Don on that day, and when exactly Prigozhin intended to capture them, is not known for sure.

In the morning of the next day, detachments of PMC “Wagner” took control of the building of the headquarters of the Southern Military District. At the same time, Deputy Minister of Defense Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was there, who, according to Alexander Lukashenko, facilitated the negotiations between him and Prigozhin.

According to the WSJ, Western special services also knew in advance about Prigozhin’s plans from satellite images and intercepted electronic messages, and believed that the rebellion had a good chance of success if it went according to plan.

According to Western intelligence, some commanders of the regular troops could be part of the conspiracy. Following The New York Times, WSJ writes that Prigozhin could have shared his plans with General Sergei Surovykin. However, it is not known whether Surovykin supported Prigozhin or, on the contrary, passed information to the FSB. After the beginning of the rebellion, the general publicly condemned him. Since then, he has not commented on the event, various rumors about his whereabouts are spreading.

Earlier, the American mass media wrote that the US intelligence had plans for Prigozhin to prepare a mutiny at the PMC “Wagner”, but, apparently, did not know the exact date of the speech. Western analysts are still studying the question of how much the rebellion, even though it failed, shook the power of President Vladimir Putin.

• During the last few months, Prigozhin sharply criticized Shoigu and Gerasimov, accusing them of incompetent conduct of the war against Ukraine. Their resignation was one of the official demands of the “March of Justice”, during which the columns of PMC “Wagner” occupied Rostov-on-Don and traveled hundreds of kilometers on the way to Moscow almost without resistance.
• Neither Shoigu nor Gerasimov commented on the events related to the rebellion. Gerasimov did not appear in public at all after his initiation.
• Current and former US officials have said that Prigozhin would not have raised a rebellion if he did not believe that other people in power would come to his aid, The New York Times wrote.
• The representative of the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the publication of this publication about Surovykin, noted that there will be many different speculations around the mutiny. “I think this is one of those examples,” Peskov told reporters.