Kiev/London, Jul. 9, (dpa/GNA) - The Freedom of Russia Legion, a paramilitary volunteer battalion, is planning more operations in the Russian border area, according to a spokesman.
“There will be a further surprise in the next month or so,” Maximillian Andronnikov, who goes by the name Caesar, told British Sunday newspaper The Observer in an interview. “It will be our third operation,” he said.
After that, he said, there will be a fourth and a fifth. “We have ambitious plans. We want to free all our territory,” the spokesman added.
The Freedom of Russia Legion consists of Russian nationalists who are currently fighting on the side of Ukraine.
In May and June, fighters from the legion together with the Russian Volunteer Corps were involved in attacks in the Russian border region of Belgorod near Ukraine.
According to Ukrainian intelligence, such operations are intended, among other things, to liberate the area from Russian President Valdimir Putin’s regime. The government in Kiev insists it has nothing to do with the attacks.
Andronnikov sees Putin as weakened after the short-lived uprising by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group in late June.
According to the Observer, he expects Putin’s government to collapse by the end of 2024. He says there is discontent in the Russian army because many soldiers who joined the military for financial reasons have not been paid: “There’s a huge problem with money.”
In Washington, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that the Wagner group and Prigozhin remained a threat to Putin.
Allowing Prigozhin and 25,000 Wagner fighters apparent full freedom of movement in Russia “shows that Putin has either remarkable (and unwarranted) confidence in their renewed loyalty, desperation to lure as many as possible to his side, or an inability to take action against them,” the ISW said.
It noted that the status of the deal between Putin and Prigozhin remained unclear and could be in flux.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s statement last week that Wagner forces were not in Belarus contradicted earlier reports that Wagner fighters were being incorporated into the Russian military, standing down or moving to Belarus, it said.
The implications of the Wagner rebellion remained unclear, “but Ukraine has already benefited from the rebellion and may gain further benefits,” the ISW said.
From London, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) said that Russian state media “were almost certainly initially surprised by the mutiny and were not prepared.”
After Russian television maintained its usual schedule, state outlets had sought to correct claims that the security forces had been passive, it said.
London also noted that the Telegram channels used by the Wagner group “have largely gone silent, almost certainly due to state intervention.”
This contrasted with the way Putin was undertaking “unusually prominent public engagements, almost certainly aiming to project strength” it said.
GNA