The Russian businessman, a longtime ally of Putin, has for months been intensifying his verbal barrage against Shoigu. Prigozhin for the first time on Friday, however, appeared to shift the narrative of the war.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, wrote on Twitter that the angles of Prigozhin's attacks on Shoigu and the Russian Defense Ministry are "becoming wider and deeper."

"There was nothing extraordinary happening on the eve of February 24," Prigozhin said.

"The Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block," the Russian businessman said. "The special operation was started for a completely different reason."

Prigozhin was echoing a main reason that Putin gave for justifying his decision to invade Ukraine last February—NATO expansion near Russia's border—but avoided naming the Russian leader. Instead, Prigozhin ramped up his months-long criticism of Shoigu.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine was a "poorly planned operation" that embarrassed Russia's military, said Prigozhin. He has often complained about weapons shortages for his Wagner troops.

"Shoigu killed thousands of the most combat-ready Russian soldiers in the first days of the war," he added.

"The mentally ill scumbags decided, 'It's OK, we'll throw in a few thousand more Russian men as 'cannon fodder.' 'They'll die under artillery fire, but we'll get what we want'," the Wagner chief added. "That's why it has become a protracted war."

While Prigozhin pits himself against the Kremlin's top brass, and positions himself as an anti-establishment figure amid the war, his popularity has been on the rise, per polls conducted in Russia in May and June.

Analysts have told Newsweek that Putin, hampered by a lack of understanding of online media, is underestimating how popular Prigozhin has become with the Russian people—and how much of a threat that could represent.

Putin has a "distorted understanding of the media and the internet information space." He sees Prigozhin as on "the periphery of political life," given that he is largely not allowed on mainstream media, said Tatiana Stanovaya. She is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and founder of R.Politik. Reality of Russian Politics, a political analysis firm.

"That is why we see this is a very bad situation where, on one hand, we have Putin, who is taking everything that comes from Prigozhin very easily, but on the other hand, a significant part of the Russian elite considers Prigozhin as a threat," Stanovaya said.

"Many of those people are scared of Prigozhin," she added. "They consider him as a risk for the state, as a problem, which should be dealt with, and the people should rise to worry about how Putin manages this risk."

A day earlier, Prigozhin had said that Shoigu is lying to Putin about "colossal" battlefield failures in Ukraine.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

https://www.newsweek.com/prigozhin-wagner-group-putin-ukraine-war-shoigu-nato-lie-1808700