Putin's Mercenary Ally Reacts To Comparisons With Rasputin: 'I Bleed Enemies Of Our Motherland'

President Vladimir Putin's staunch ally and Russian mercenary boss responded to media reports drawing comparisons between him and the fabled monk Grigori Rasputin. 

What Happened: Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Sunday his job was not to staunch bleeding but to spill the blood of Russia’s enemies.

This came after the Financial Times newspaper reported that Prigozhin had a growing influence on Putin and likened him to Rasputin, a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who had considerable influence on the wife of Russia’s last tsar, Nikolai II.

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Rasputin treated the son of the last tsar for hemophilia. 

“I am not very familiar with the history of Rasputin, but as far as I know, an important quality of Rasputin is that he staunched the blood flow of the young prince with incantations,” Prigozhin’s press service quoted him, according to Reuters.

“Unfortunately, I do not staunch blood flow. I bleed the enemies of our motherland. And not by incantations, but by direct contact with them," he added.

Prigozhin is the founder of the Wagner private military group, which has played a major role in Putin's attempts to capture territory in Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, warned that the U.S. and NATO’s support of Ukraine is leading the world to a “terrible war.”

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Photo via government.ru on Wikimedia Commons