Political strategist Konstantin Dolgov said that he was fired from the Cart Online project because of an interview with entrepreneur Yevgeny Prigozhin, who calls himself the founder of the private military company Wagner. Prigozhin, in a conversation with Dolgov, criticized the course of the special operation and spoke about the combat losses of the Wagner PMC.
“I was fired for an interview with Prigogine. <...> Yesterday morning, the senior producer of the Telega Online stream show informed me that the project no longer needed my services,” Dolgov wrote in his Telegram channel.
The interview came out late on May 23rd. The next morning, Dolgov, according to him, was told in plain text that he was “fired because of the interview with Prigozhin.”
According to Konstantin Dolgov, the Telega Online project is supervised and funded by the Internet Development Institute (IRI). He wrote to IRI director Aleksey Goreslavsky and asked him to explain what was going on.
“Aleksey Sergeevich advised me to contact the producers of the project and expressed the hope that it was a “situational decision” (meaning my dismissal),” the political consultant said.
According to him, the producers of the show informed him that the decision to fire him “was made after calls from above.” “For some reason, these mysterious “callers” were offended by some of Prigozhin’s statements that sounded in his answers. But apparently, they cannot do anything to Yevgeny Viktorovich. Therefore, we decided to recoup the interviewer, ”Dolgov wrote. He assured that he would tell how the situation would develop.
On his Telegram channel, Konstantin Dolgov posted a link to an interview with Yevgeny Prigozhin. It lasts over an hour. In it, Prigozhin, in particular, criticized the course of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and spoke about the combat losses of Wagner PMC.