Russia's Shoigu deploys his PMC in Ukraine

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu’s Patriot Private Military Company (PMC), which is competing with Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner PMC, has been spotted near Vuhledar in Donetsk Oblast.

The news came from Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, during the national joint 24/7 newscast.

"In particular, in the area of Stepne on the Vuhledar front, we have noticed that in addition to Wagner PMC, Patriot PMC, affiliated with the current Russian Defence Minister Shoigu, has appeared. Obviously, they are pulling up all combat capabilities to achieve at least some results," he said, according to Yahoo News.

Cherevatyi, commenting on rumours of a conflict between Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner PMC and Sergei Shoigu’s Patriot PMC, has called them competitive. At the same time, they are in different "theatres of war". In his opinion, there is no direct interaction between them.

In November, the Ukrainian Resistance reported that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner PMC, is strengthening his position in Russia and wants to punish Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu for the defeats of the Russian forces on the battlefield in Ukraine. The National Resistance Center reports that Prigozhin blames Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, for the failures on the front.