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Telegram channels associated with the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC), including GREY ZONE and Wagner's Tactical Vest (“Razgruzka Wagnera”), are circulating a video that allegedly shows the head of the organization, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and its commander, Dmitry Utkin, speaking to its mercenaries. The footage was shot in the dark, and the faces of the speakers cannot be made out in the video.
Self-styled “war correspondent” Vladimir Romanov claimed that the video was recorded on July 18 in the village of Tsel’ in the Mohilev region of Belarus.
Yevgeny Prigozhin says that what is happening under the leadership of the Russian Defense Ministry at the front is “a disgrace, in which we do not need to take part,” and it is necessary to wait for the moment “when we can prove ourselves to the fullest.” The head of the Wagner Group then says that the mercenaries will now go to fight in Africa, but will return to Ukraine, when they are sure that they “will not be forced to shame themselves and our combat experience.”
Then PMC commander Dmitry Utkin takes the floor:
“Yes, if anyone doesn’t know, I’m that very 'Wagner.’ Most of you know me, most of you I know personally. [...] This is not the end, this is just the beginning – the biggest job in the world, which will be done very soon. And WELCOME TO HELL!”
At the end of the clip, one of the mercenaries can be heard asking: «Are we going to go waste more f***ots?» The man with Prigozhin's voice replies: “We’ll waste f***ots all over the world.”