Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner makes a startling statement in a new video on Telegram.
There, the man who is called “Putin’s cook” says that he will stand as a presidential candidate during the Ukrainian elections in 2024.
– I have just got political ambitions when I look at everything around me. I have decided to stand for the presidential election in 2024, says Prigozhin before he pauses a little and says:
– As president of Ukraine.
Reacts: – Cut off
In 2024 there are presidential elections in Russia and Ukraine, so Prigozhin’s short break is hardly accidental, believes Niklas Rendboe, researcher at the Danish Defense Academy specializing in the Wagner group.
– We have seen before that Prigozhin conducts political communication with a lot of humor, and here he plays openly with the speculation that he should be a possible rival to Putin. First he suggests that he is, and then he says that it is as the president of Ukraine. But how could he ever be? says Niklas Rendboe Danish TV 2.
The rules for standing as a presidential candidate in Ukraine mean that the Russian would not have been allowed to stand for election anyway.
Anton Herashchenko, who is an adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, has no doubts about how to interpret the video.
– Prigozhin says he will stand as a presidential candidate in Ukraine in 2024. That declaration is intended to divert attention from his political ambitions in Russia, where he dreams of coming to power and potentially being Putin’s replacement, he writes on Twitter.
Rendboe does not think that one should take the Russian’s message seriously, but that the video is not necessarily completely uninteresting either. He believes that playing with the topic is a “slightly risky move” when he already has a number of enemies in Russia.