The man on the right in the photo above is Vladimir Putin. The man on the left is Yevgeny Prigozhin and he may be the man most likely to fall out of a high window in the coming days.

Prigozhin is the founder of the Wagner Group of mercenaries. For weeks there has been an internal conflict building up between Prigozhin’s mercenaries, which are largely made up of untrained men recruited from Russia’s prisons, and Russia’s actual military which is led by generals selected directly by Putin. Yesterday this crisis came to a head as Prigozhin accused the leadership of the military of treason.

Wagner’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has taken aim at military leaders in a series of increasingly hostile audio messages on social media this week, and on Tuesday accused the “chief of the general staff and minister of defense” of withholding ammunition and supplies from his fighters to try to destroy Wagner, “which can be equated to treason.”

“A bunch of military-related officials have decided that it is their country, that it is their people,” Mr. Prigozhin said in one profanity-laden audio message published by his press service on Tuesday. “They have decided that these people will die when it is convenient to them, when they feel like it.”

The Defense Ministry has not publicly responded to the accusations. Mr. Prigozhin, a longtime ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, operated for years in secrecy, but he has assumed an increasingly public role in the conflict since last summer. His growing criticism of the war effort in recent months has been causing concern among some Kremlin insiders…

“I don’t have an option, I’m going until the end,” Mr. Prigozhin said in another audio message on Tuesday, explaining his decision to go public with his accusations against the military commanders. “My people are dying in heaps.”

This is pretty obviously a power play between Prigozhin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Right now Prigozhin has two things going for him. First, he’s been a long-time friend of Putin which is why he was allowed to speak as openly as he has. The second thing he has going for him is that his Wagner troops are really the only ones who’ve made any worthwhile gains on the battlefield in the past several months.

Wagner succeeds by sending human waves of untrained former prisoners toward the front lines. Most of the men get cut down but by drawing fire they help Russian artillery locate Ukranians on the battlefield. So gradually they do advance, albeit at great cost. Prigozhin’s claim that his men are “dying in heaps” is true but I suspect the reason has to do with Wagner’s tactics as much as with a lack of ammunition. Whatever the case, he’s demanding everyone’s attention.

When the ministry denied his allegations, he hit back describing its statement as “spitting” at Wagner, complaining it had not received 80% of the ammunition requested to carry out its combat missions.

He then posted a picture, apparently from the Bakhmut area, of the corpses of dozens of mercenaries killed in battle lying on the frozen ground awaiting collection.

“These are the guys who died yesterday because of so-called ‘shell shortages’. There are five times more of them than there should have been,” he said in an audio message to his press service.

He called on Russians to demand publicly, but without resorting to demonstrations, that the defence ministry give ammunition to his troops.

It’s hard to tell what’s going on from the outside but it’s possible the Russian military has decided Wagner, by succeeding even marginally, is making them look bad. That may be why they’ve cut off the group’s supplies of ammunition. Prigozhin, by being so vocal about it, is trying to get Putin’s attention so he’ll put a stop to it.

But it’s a risky game he’s playing. Criticism of the military is illegal in Russia and Putin may not like seeing this sort of public outburst or call for the public to back someone besides himself. His old friend Prigozhin may have good intentions but these kind of bucking the system sets a precedent, i.e. if one oligarch can call on the public to make demands others might get ideas.

The other problem is that by going public with this Prigozhin isn’t leaving Putin much wiggle room. What if Putin decides he can’t afford to anger the army at this moment? What if the army makes it clear they won’t tolerate this kind of criticism? Again, this is a risky game to be playing. If Prigozhin gets his way and Putin orders the military to resupply Wagner maybe it will pay off. But it’s also possible Putin just decides that his old friend is raising too much fuss, too publicly. In Russia, anyone who embarrasses Putin has a tendency to mysteriously fall out of a high window. If I were Prigozhin, I’d think about wearing a parachute 24/7 for the next few weeks.