'I bleed the enemies of our motherland': Russian Wagner Boss acknowledges Rasputin parity

Russian mercenary group Wagner's boss Yevgeny Prigozhin responded to comparisons between himself and the Russian monk Rasputin who claimed to be a monk with 'mystic abilities'. Rasputin had notably treated the son of the last tsar for haemophilia but Prigozhin on Sunday said that his job was not to staunch bleeding but to spill the blood of his "motherland".

The Financial Times newspaper released a report on Saturday highlighting the growing influence Prigozhin had on the Kremlin and likened him to Orthodox holy man Grigory Rasputin, who had considerable influence on the wife of Russia’s last tsar, Nikolai II. “I am not very familiar with the history of Rasputin, but as far as I know, an important quality of Rasputin is that he staunched the blood flow of the young prince with incantations,” Prigozhin’s press service quoted him as saying, referring to the article. “Unfortunately, I do not staunch blood flow. I bleed the enemies of our motherland. And not by incantations, but by direct contact with them.”

The US authorities on Friday decided to designate the Wagner group as a “significant transnational criminal organisation”. This comes after Russia claimed to have captured the town of Soledar, near Bakhmut. According to the Ukrainian authorities, Wagner fighters have been sent into attacks in large numbers that have resulted in multiple casualties, reported BBC. Also, the Wagner Group has been heavily involved in Russian efforts to capture the city of Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine.

Wagner has been deployed in a number of African countries too, to combat insurgents. In recent months, Prigozhin has been seen in online videos trying to lure inmates from Russian prisons to join its ranks in Ukraine.

Not the first Prigozhin-Rasputin comparison

Andrey Kolesnikov, an expert at the Carnegie Center, spoke to Russia-based media outlet Current Time on November 1, 2022 and made the comparison of Prigozhin's role to that of Rasputin who was assassinated in 1916 by a group of Russian noblemen who feared his growing influence on the tsarist family. The newspaper said that Prigozhin, like Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, another active supporter of Russia’s war, “has positioned himself as a searing critic of military, bureaucratic and business elites who are supposedly failing Putin with their half-hearted, incompetent approach to the war”.

When the news outlet asked Kolesnikov, "In your opinion, what role does the founder of the Wagner PMC, the so-called Putin's chef Yevgeny Prigozhin, play now?" Kolesnikov replied: "In terms of his influence, at least in public space, he begins to resemble Rasputin at the court of Nicholas II. And naturally, many are now thinking about whether this person is, say, the next presidential candidate or a figure who can enter the highest spheres of politics, independently pushing everyone who approaches him with his elbows. In any case, now he is getting a lot. Yes, Putin needs him now, because Putin needs military efficiency at any cost. But Putin thereby strengthens these two informal, or rather partly formal, leaders, but behaving extremely informally: Kadyrov and Prigogine."