Russian FSB, National Guard, MoD Units Went Over To Prigozhin’s Side During Rebellion

A list of units that supported the rebellion has been published.

Russian human rights activist, founder of the organization Gulagu.net Vladimir Osechkin published on Facebook on June 25 a list of Russian units that, during the military coup attempt, which was undertaken on June 23-24 by the creator of the recognized criminal Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin, went over to his side.

According to Osechkin, this refers to such law enforcement agencies as the Ministry of Defense, the Federal Security Service and the Federal Service of the National Guard Troops.

The list includes eight units, namely, special forces, a tank brigade base, a military intelligence special communications detachment, and a nuclear weapons storage base.

Also, according to Osechkin, Typhoon vehicles were handed over to the Wagnerites to block bridges, and border guards and customs officers at the Chertkovo border checkpoint in the Rostov region obeyed them.

The human rights activist noted that the list of units that partially or completely went over to Prigozhin’s side was compiled on the basis of data from a Gulagu.net source in the Wagner PMC and in the Russian special services, as well as on the intercepted conversations.

“According to the information from one of the leading military experts at Gulagu.net, under military criteria, persons who did not show armed resistance at such facilities are already considered to have defected to the enemy,” Osechkin wrote.

He also quoted one of the Russian intelligence officers with the call sign WOC-7 about the consequences of the mutiny.

“More than 15 criminal cases against traitors have already been initiated. The special communications and codes / ciphers of the Southern Military District (SMD) of the RF Ministry of Defense were captured by the Wagner PMC. FSB customs posts were seized. This special operation was prepared and developed for more than eight months,” he said.

According to the intelligence officer, deputy chiefs of the Russian General Staff Sergei Surovikin and Vladimir Alekseev “not only knew, but were in the know and verbally instructed some commanders not to provide armed resistance, which is why they were urgently taken under control and forced to voice an appeal to Prigozhin.

“Later, during the capture of the headquarters of the Southern Military District of the Moscow Region, Alekseev uttered an important phrase to Prigozhin’s demand to give them Chief of the General Staff [Valery] Gerasimov: “Yes, feel free to take them.” They were ready to hand over their commander (higher commanding staff) to the rebels. This is a fact of betrayal, on which there will be a decision soon,”says WOC-7.

He stated that this “special operation” was attended by former military from the Russian special operations forces and Russian intelligence as part of the Wagner PMC, “who were previously trained for similar special operations on the territory of foreign states, primarily to seize customs posts, communication points, local units of the army and strategic weapons.

“Formally, Yevgeny Prigozhin himself was at the location of the headquarters of the Southern Military District of the Russian MoD, did not physically move from there, held conversations with the Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation and did not give orders to detain or seize anything, unlike [Dmitry] Utkin, [Alexander] Kuznetsov and other PMC commanders, with regard to whom neither [President of the Russian terrorist country Vladimir] Putin nor [his press secretary Dmitry] Peskov promised immunity and refusal to conduct criminal prosecution. By the end of the year, they will be detained or liquidated,” WOC-7 explained.

As the Charter97.org website reported earlier, the Wagnerites’ boss Yevgeny Prigozhin announced the start of a military coup. On June 24, Wagner troops took Rostov-on-Don and marched through the Rostov, Voronezh and Lipetsk regions of the Russian Federation. Wagner columns with armored vehicles entered the Moscow region and approached a distance of 200 km to Moscow, after which Prigozhin announced his army was turning back. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Prigozhin had been acquitted of the criminal charge of rebellion, and that he would now live in Belarus.