Kremlin Plays Down Prigozhin's 'A****** Grandfather' Jibe

Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin had not seen the video in which Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was believed to have insulted the Russian president.

While Putin tried to glorify his invasion of Ukraine during a speech at Victory Day celebrations in Red Square, Prigozhin issued an expletive-filled diatribe on his Telegram channel disparaging Moscow's war effort.

As well as accusing the Russian state of not being able to defend the country and revisiting his complaints about not getting enough ammunition, he said on Tuesday, "What if it turns out that the grandfather is a real a******?" in a comment some believed was a reference to Putin.

When asked about the video, Peskov suggested that the Kremlin was too busy. "You know what we were doing yesterday," he told reporters on Wednesday. "There were many guests, many events."

The Wagner founder responded cryptically to media questions on Wednesday about who exactly "the grandfather" he was referring to could be.

"'Who might be the grandfather?' Option number one is Mizintsev who was fired for giving us shells and so from now on he is unable to give us more," Prigozhin said in an audio post on Telegram.

Prigozhin was referring to Mikhail Mizintsev, a colonel general who served as the deputy defense minister for logistics until last month and joined Wagner as a deputy commander.

"Option number two, chief of the General Staff, Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov, who should give us shells," Prigozhin said, lamenting that "we don't receive it in sufficient volumes but only get 10 percent [of what we need]."

"And option three is Natalya Khim, who appeared on social networks offering us boxes of shells," he said, referring to a reality TV star who is fighting in the Donbas and has claimed to have pushed for Wagner to be supplied with shells.

"Choose any of these options who I called the 'grandfather,'" Prigozhin added.

The video showed the extent of the conflict between the Wagner boss and the Russian Defense Ministry, with Prigozhin also claiming that Russian units of the 72nd Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade had abandoned positions near Bakhmut.

This was later corroborated by Ukraine's Third Assault Brigade, which made advances in the Donetsk town.

In a video on May 5, Prigozhin directly addressed Putin in his appeal for more munitions after publishing an expletive-filled clip in front of rows of what he claimed were his fighters who had been killed in battle for lack of resources.

As Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and founder of R.Politik. Reality of Russian Politics, a political analysis firm, told Newsweek the videos show that Prigozhin has no direct contact with Putin.

"The only way to express his dissent, disagreement, his anger, is to go public," she said. "That is why he has to post so many videos where he shows how fierce he is and how things have gone wrong, how difficult it is for him and his guys."

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.