Wagner chief accuses Russian military leadership of bombing his forces, vows response

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of private military group Wagner, has vowed to retaliate after accusing Russia's military leadership of killing a "huge amount" of his forces in strikes - prompting Russia's domestic intelligence service to open a criminal case against him.

In a series of Telegram posts on Friday, Prigozhin - who has frequently criticized Russia's traditional military hierarchy - accused them of "trying to deprive us of the opportunity to defend our homes and instead hunt down Wagner PMC."

He said strikes were launched "on our camps" and that "a huge amount of our fighters were killed, our comrades in arms. We will make a decision about how to respond to these atrocities. The next step is ours." Russia's Ministry of Defense has denied the claims, calling it an "informational provocation."

The mercenary then warned that retribution would be meted out. "We will deal with those who destroy Russian soldiers and return to the front, justice for the troops will be restored, and then justice for all of Russia," he added.

In a later Telegram post, Prigozhin clarified that his criticism of the Russian military leadership was a "march of justice" and not a coup. "This is not a military coup, this is a march of justice. Our actions do not interfere with the troops in any way," Prigozhin said.

Wagner has played a prominent role in the Ukraine war, and Prigozhin, so far, has faced few consequences for his public feud with Russia's military leadership - where he has accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and armed forces chief Valery Gerasimov of not giving his forces ammunition.

Patience for his outbursts appeared to wane on Friday. Russian state media TASS said that Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) had "initiated a criminal case on the fact of calling for an armed rebellion. We demand that illegal actions be stopped immediately."

According to TASS, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said that the allegations spread by Prigozhin "have no basis."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is aware of the situation and "all necessary measures are being taken," according to state media RIA Novosti.

Earlier on Friday, Prigozhin furthered his ongoing dispute with military leaders in a highly critical video interview where he said Moscow invaded Ukraine under false pretenses devised by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and that Russia is actually losing ground on the battlefield.

The Ukrainian invasion or the so-called "special operation," he said, was not launched because of a threat to Russia from Ukraine or NATO despite what Moscow claims, he said in the interview posted on Telegram by Wagner's media arm.

He added that the situation in eastern Ukraine had not changed in eight years from the time Crimea was annexed, with both sides taking the occasional shot at each other, without any escalation, he said.

His comments challenge Russia's justification for the war, with President Putin having framed the invasion of Ukraine as a "special mission" to protect Russian speakers from genocide at the hands of ​"neo-Nazis."

Prigozhin has previously defended the reasoning for the war but has been critical of how it has been handled by the Minister of Defense, Shoigu - with whom he is directly fighting with over military contracts.

In the interview, he claimed the ministry misled Russian President Putin entirely. "Now the Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public, trying to deceive the President and tell the story that there was insane aggression on the part of Ukraine, and that they were going to attack us together with the NATO bloc. Therefore, the so-called special operation on February 24 was launched for completely different reasons," he said.

The Wagner chief also accused Shoigu of deceiving Putin about the status of the Ukrainian battlefield, claiming Russian troops are on the back foot in the south of Ukraine, and that the whole invasion was a "poorly planned operation."

CNN's Lindsay Isaac contributed to this report.