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RIGA, Latvia — With Moscow still reeling from the failed Wagner mercenary group rebellion, the Kremlin has begun the difficult task of dissolving and subverting Yevgeny Prigozhin’s sprawling empire, which included not only the shady mercenary army but also a propaganda medium to bring his control to wing and internet troll factories notorious for interfering in elections in the United States.
Prigozhin, the St. Petersburg mogul known as “Putin’s chef” for making billions from state catering deals to feed soldiers and kindergarten teachers across Russia, has disappeared since he agreed last Saturday to end his mutiny finish and go to Belarus. Although Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Prigozhin got there, he was not seen.
In his absence, the warlord’s business is already beginning to crumble, and his media empire is the first to fall apart. But dealing with the dissolution, restructuring or takeover of its operations poses a challenge for the Russian government. In Africa, for example, Russia has tried to reassure executives who had been relying on Wagner for security that the company will continue to operate, but it is not clear that this will be possible while cutting off Prigozhin from the flow of public money that and have funded has enriched him for decades.
Additionally, the Russian military relies on Prigozhin’s stores to feed soldiers fighting in Ukraine and cannot afford disruptions.
Meanwhile, US intelligence officials are working to learn more about how the aftermath of Prigozhin’s falling out with Russian President Vladimir Putin is affecting Russia’s mercenary army and formal defense establishment.
According to US intelligence officials, General Sergey Surovikin, deputy commander of the war in Ukraine, has been arrested by Russian authorities. However, they said it was unclear whether his imprisonment was temporary or whether he faced punishment as an accomplice to the Wagner uprising.
Adding to the complexity in Russia is the gray funding that Prigozhin used – partly because some of its deals were illegal. Many worked only with cash and had creative bookkeeping, as evidenced by the billions of rubles stowed in vans near Wagner’s St Petersburg headquarters and seized by law enforcement after the mutiny.
“Prigozhin is not just the Wagner group, he represents a structure trying to work on the ideological front, on the political front, etc.,” said Denis Korotkov, a Russian investigative journalist who first uncovered the Wagner group . “All of this works in a tight ecosystem with other sides of his business.”
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Prigozhin ran the Patriot media group, a network of websites and blogs that spread its messages through online platforms and thrived on the Telegram app. This allowed Prigozhin and Wagner to improve their public image, despite being blacklisted on state television, and to condemn regular military leaders for poor warfare.
Prigozhin’s online operation included the notorious troll factory, whose employees were sanctioned by the United States for election interference. Those efforts have morphed into new projects like Cyber Front Z, which recruited people to post pro-Russian comments in discussions about the war in Ukraine on many of the world’s most popular online platforms.
After the uprising, Prigozhin’s websites were quickly taken offline by Russia’s internet regulator Roskomnadzor. On Friday evening, Yevgeny Zubarev, editor-in-chief of the group’s flagship site, RIA FAN, announced that the entire media group would be shut down.
“We are breaking up and leaving Russia’s information agenda,” Zubarev said in a surprisingly candid video, in which he revealed that Prigozhin began his first disinformation campaigns in 2009.
It may have taken Russian authorities just a few days to curb Prigozhin’s influence on the internet, but other ventures, such as his vast recruiting network of fighters across Russia; its operations throughout Africa and the Middle East; and his catering business – the backbone of the entire empire – will be much more difficult, if not impossible, to wind down.
Although Prigozhin has not been seen in Belarus, there are reports of a camp being built there following Lukashenko’s deal to end the rebellion. And Wagner’s recruitment efforts in Russia still appear to be working as of Friday, although most of her VKontakte social media pages, which are a key recruitment tool, have been taken offline.
A Wagner recruiter contacted by the Washington Post said the group had no plans to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry and that active recruitment was ongoing. The recruiter also denied reports that the group was migrating to Belarus.
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Bumaga, a local news outlet from St. Petersburg, reported earlier this week that recruitment is continuing, including at local gyms and fight clubs, although Russian officials said Wagner would no longer be involved in the war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin is anticipating still referred to as a “special military operation”.
The sum at stake is enormous.
According to Putin’s own account, Prigozhin’s catering company received at least $1 billion last year through government contracts to feed tens of thousands of soldiers on the front lines in Ukraine. These catering contracts were the primary means of financing Prigozhin and its businesses for the Russian state.
Prigozhin’s main company, Concord, and its subsidiaries almost certainly provided food and other services at an inflated price, then used the excess revenue to fund unofficial ventures, including the mercenary group.
“Concord heads a group of companies that has been providing food to soldiers in the Russian Armed Forces since 2006,” Prigozhin wrote in a June letter to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. “The revenues of these companies will then be used to finance projects in Africa, Syria and other countries, where expenditure on promoting the interests of the Russian state amounted to 147 billion rubles as of May 2023.” [about $1.7 billion].”
It will be difficult to replace a supplier of this magnitude, especially as Russian fighters try to repel a Ukrainian counter-offensive. Any loss of revenue from catering could have a knock-on effect on the rest of the businesses that rely on those cash flows.
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Although Putin said Wagner fighters would be allowed to join Prigozhin in Belarus, early indications are that the mercenary group is likely to be drastically downsized. Putin has essentially offered Wagner fighters three options: follow Prigozhin into exile, join Russia’s regular armed forces, or go home.
It is not clear how many fighters joined the mutiny or stayed by Prigozhin’s side. Prigozhin claimed that his force numbered 25,000 fighters, although the real number is probably lower. According to US estimates, the Wagner force in Ukraine consisted of around 10,000 contractors – a more loyal and trained part of the group. The rest were convicts recruited from prisons who suffered heavy casualties in the battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
“I would be surprised if Prigozhin had his paramilitary formation in thousands of people,” said Ruslan Leviev, a military analyst with the Conflict Intelligence Team, an independent Russian open-source intelligence group (OSINT). “They handed over all armored vehicles to the Ministry of Defense. Access to money, tenders and media empires was cut off. Who pays her salary? And why should Prigozhin need them if now he does not receive corrupt money for them?”
There are other private military companies in Russia, but none appear capable of replacing Wagner in Africa, where for years it served as an unofficial continuation of the Kremlin’s efforts to exert influence and weaken the influence of the United States and Europe.
“There is nobody,” said investigative journalist Korotkov when asked who could replace Wagner. “Technically, you could find another subcontractor, but Prigozhin had weight and caliber there.”
“Anyone trying to get in there will likely first loot the funds and then be dismembered somewhere in the jungle,” he added. “So there is no comparable personality in Russia who would take on this burden.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday it was up to African countries to decide whether to continue security deals with Wagner.
In the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali, the two countries where Wagner has the largest presence on the continent, leaders stressed that their original links were with the Kremlin and not the paramilitary group.
Fidèle Gouandjika, a top adviser to Central African President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, said the country initially signed security deals with Moscow: “We didn’t know Wagner. We didn’t sign with Wagner. We signed with the Kremlin,” Gouandjika said.
But Gouandjika also acknowledged that Russia ultimately sent Wagner soldiers and that those soldiers, he said, “saved democracy in the Central African Republic.” The “entire population” was satisfied with the performance of the contractors, he dismissed reports of atrocities by Wagner soldiers as “fake news”.
According to Sentry, an investigative organization investigating war crimes, conflict and corruption in Africa, Wagner controls all military operations outside of the Central African Republic’s capital, Bangui, and conducted “widespread, systematic and well-planned campaigns of mass killing, torture and rape” in the whole country.
Sentry said the mercenary group had trained and equipped a dozen militia.
“In the Central African Republic, Wagner perfected a plan for state conquest, thereby supporting a criminalized state hijacked by the Central Africans [Republic] “We have attacked the President and his inner circle, amassed military might, secured access to and looted valuable minerals, and subjected the populace to terror,” the Sentry wrote in a report released Tuesday.
Gouandjika said no changes are planned. “Wagner saved the Central African Republic,” he said. “At the moment we are with Wagner. But staying with Wager doesn’t depend on us. It depends on Russia… and we have faith in Russia.”
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But even if Moscow decided to dismantle Wagner’s presence in the country, the group’s roots there may now run too deep. Martin Ziguele, the former Prime Minister of the Central African Republic and now an opposition politician, said that Touadéra “put the wolves in their laps” by allowing the mercenaries “who are capable of anything and react to nobody” in the already fragile able to operate country.
“The main threat does not come from armed groups or the opposition; it comes from Wagner,” said Ziguele. “They have infiltrated all systems. In the heart of the army, in business, in the timber industry, in politics, at the airport – everything. You have all power.”
Touadéra was at this point, said Ziguele, a “complete hostage” to Wagner.
An analyst in Bangui, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the situation, said Wagner contractors had remained at their bases since Thursday and there was no discernible change in the capital. John Lechner, an expert on Wagner activities in Africa, said: “It is safe to say that they will continue for the foreseeable future.”
“Even if there were a change in management, I think a change in personnel would be relatively slow,” said Lechner.
As the Kremlin works to break away from the once-loyal warlord, it has also become clear that Prigozhin was the glue that held together a fractured empire, just as many aspects of modern Russia hang on one man: Putin.
“In the absence of Mr. Prigozhin himself, the Wagner group will either cease to exist, or it will degenerate into something completely different, unable to achieve the same level of activity,” Korotkov said.
Ilyushina and Dixon reported from Riga, Latvia; Chason from Dakar, Senegal; and Hudson of Washington.
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