The head-on clash – with the threat of civil war – between Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner private army on the one hand and the Russian Defense Ministry and the state’s institutional hierarchy on the other has been heralded and repeatedly broken up. by analysts and stakeholders of various tendencies. However, nobody knew when it would happen, with what consequences, at what depth and at what cost. The first unknown has already been cleared up.
The insurgency was apparently accelerated because Prigozhin was bullied and led into an impasse by the systematic attempt by President Putin and the Defense Ministry to clip the wings of the man whose troops were until recently glorified for their decisive victories in Ukraine and Ukraine praised by Kremlin propagandists.
The harassment has intensified in recent weeks. This month, the Russian State Duma passed a law aimed at restoring the state’s monopoly on the use of force. Under this law, all combatants, whether mobilized, volunteers or captured, must submit to the Ministry of Defense hierarchy. The army of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov submitted to the measure in a disciplined manner. Wagner, no. The lower house of the Russian parliament has also passed regulations on hiring (and also pardoning) criminals in the process of serving their sentences.
These two measures meant that Wagner no longer had the opportunity to raise a private army of mercenaries who wanted to exploit the opaque, unregulated terrain that Putin maintains (in many areas) in order to give the subjects – allies or economically useful to him – the To facilitate action they could not act within the framework of the law of the Russian Federation. Mercenaries are banned in Russia and all attempts by Parliament to regulate the status and powers of Wagner and private military companies have so far been unsuccessful.
It was in this gray area, outside the law, that Wagner operated while being useful to the Russian authorities, and there he remained until he stopped directing an escalation of accusations and curses against Prigozhin at the Ministry of Defense, Russia’s ruling elite and the fundamentals and official declarations on the cause of war.
Since the Kremlin counted on Wagner’s support in invading Ukraine until it was alarmed by Prigozhin’s encouragement, the so-called “Kremlin cook” raised his own army of tens of thousands of men and thousands of ex-convicts returned from the front and were killed thanks to him pardoned.
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From outside the scene in which Prigozhin, the Kremlin and Russian state institutions operate, it is still not possible to discern whether this foul-mouthed populist’s uprising was the timely act of a defiant putschist, the figurehead of one (or more) of the Kremlin’s families, or both simultaneously. In the latter case, it would be necessary to know what element upset the balance between Prigozhin’s personal interests and his connections with the elite. In his brief address, President Vladimir Putin called the mutiny a treason, and only those who are trusted commit treason. Putin did not mention Prigozhin’s name or that of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
On Saturday afternoon, Prigozhin attempted to defuse tensions, congratulating himself on not shedding blood and claiming a sense of responsibility for canceling the “Justice March” that was supposed to take his men to Moscow. However, regardless of the outcome of the struggle, which is manifested in all its severity, the situation in Russia will never be the same, because if until this June 23 the epicenter of history was in the war against Ukraine, now the perspective is focused on it the specter of the internal Russian civil war. The fact that the march met so little resistance on its way to the capital casts doubt on the defense of the national territory and could weaken President Putin, Russian media in Moscow report.
If Prigozhin is the appendage of one of the Kremlin families, one wonders if those families might agree to sacrifice the inconvenient mutineer (and perhaps consider other scenarios for the end of the conflict). Or maybe one of those families would prevail over the others.
Beyond these theoretical hypotheses, it is worth asking how Wagner’s withdrawal from the Ukrainian front will affect the fighting ability of Russian troops and also the already sinking morale of the men sent into battle in the name of their superiors’ delusions. Will there be divisions in the Russian armed forces or, on the contrary, will the troops stick together?
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Impact on the situation in Ukraine
It is also worth asking how (or if) Ukraine will take advantage of (or know how to take advantage of) the current situation in Russia. Another point that needs to be clarified – and that affects the processes that might be going on behind the scenes in Russia – are the possible attempts and sharing alliances between exiled oligarchs who want to get back the money taken from them by the Putin regime to the Russian government that they want to work with them and return to a more comfortable and less warlike life with the world. Interesting is the reaction of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil empire, who was exiled in Russia after ten years in prison. Khodorkovsky had supported the now-cancelled Wagner march from Rostov-on-Don to Moscow. In the event that Prigozhin marched on Moscow, Khodorkovsky recommended “preventing a stop”, helping with fuel and “convincing those who give the order to stop that the enemy is now widespread”.
Putin’s speech after the uprising should serve as a guide and guide for the regional administrations of Russia and determine the behavior of their leaders. Everyday life in Moscow and St. Petersburg is already disrupted, and in the Russian capital, where security has been visibly tightened in recent days, billboards and street banners advertising Wagner’s recruitment campaigns have been hastily removed. In provinces like Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh and Lipetsk, on the other hand, the situation did not seem so clear at first. And for the Russian population, it can be hard to digest that the heroes of the battles of Bakhmut or Soledar are now magically disappearing from official memory.
“The civil war in Russia is a norm and can last for decades in latent form and alternating with acute phases,” writes analyst Vladimir Pastukhov, according to which the last cycle of aggravation of this civil war began in 1989 and has not yet ended. “The Prigozhin mutiny is just one of the episodes of this civil war that has lasted almost half a century,” writes Pastukhov. And the political scientist reminds that in the civil war there are no overtones and no nuances and one is “either with the reds or with the whites”. The choice is painful. “Between Putin and Russia’s long night” and “the fleeting phenomenon of Prigozhin’s civil war,” he says.
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