Russia's elite fear for their safety after a Putin ally advocated punishing those who don't support the war, report says

• Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin has been an influential player during Russia's war in Ukraine.
• He said that tycoons who don't show enough support for the war should face "Stalinist repressions."

Russia's elite are worried for their safety after an ally of President Vladimir Putin said those who aren't enthusiastic enough about the war in Ukraine should be repressed, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Putin loyalist and founder of the paramilitary Wagner Group, said that Russian tycoons who are not supportive enough over the conflict should face "urgent Stalinist repressions", Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.

The "Stalinist repressions" are a reference to Russia's Great Purge, a political campaign led by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1937 that aimed to eliminate anyone in his party he considered a threat.

Prigozhin's comments have alarmed top Russian business executives and government officials, who told Bloomberg they are worried about the direction the war is going, and fear purges and arbitrary arrests.

The officials told Bloomberg they were concerned for their own safety, and that they were checking in with each other regularly to see if their family members are safe.

Prigozhin is the founder of the notorious Wagner Group, a mercenary paramilitary organization whose fighters have been accused of widespread war crimes in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.

Most recently, the group was linked to massacres and atrocities committed in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

Since the start of Russia's invasion, Prigozhin has increasingly positioned himself as a hardliner, openly criticizing generals and Russia's Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu for the failures of the military in Ukraine.

He met with Putin in private in October to voice his dissent, The Washington Post reported.

Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Bloomberg that Prigozhin is "behaving like a parallel government."

"He may be able to compete for power, if not under Putin then after him," Kolesnikov added.