The head of Russia’s private mercenary Wagner group Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Friday that Ukraine and NATO didn’t plan to attack Russia. He accused the Defense Ministry of “deceiving” people and President Vladimir Putin. 

“Now the Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public, trying to deceive the president and tell the story that there was some insane aggression on the part of Ukraine, and they were going to attack us together with the entire NATO bloc,” Prigozhin said in a 30-minute video released on his Telegram. 

According to him, the Ukrainians had a group of troops that was located along the borders with the territory of the eastern Donbas, now partially occupied by Russia. 

“This group exchanged shots: we hit them, they hit us, and this happened all these long eight years - from 2014 to 2022. Sometimes the number of different shootings increased, sometimes it decreased. There was nothing extraordinary on February 24 (2022),” Prigozhin said.

Moscow has insisted since the beginning of its invasion on Ukraine last year that it was “forced” to act as Kyiv was allegedly planning to attack Russia. However, Prigozhin argued that the reason for the start of the “special military operation” as the Kremlin has dubbed it, was “completely different.” He also claimed that Moscow could've avoided the war by negotiating with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.