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RIGA, Latvia — Before Wagner’s mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin sent his private army on Moscow this weekend, he told Russians that for the country to stand a chance of winning its war in Ukraine, it had to become a “North Korea-like” state the death penalty in force.
Yet whatever Prigozhin hoped to achieve with the short-lived rebellion, he probably had no intention of being exiled to Belarus, an even more isolated dictatorship than Russia, often referred to as the North Korea of Europe, and which he is now expected to follow in a deal around arrest and avoid prosecution.
At the end of his ill-fated “Justice March” on Sunday, Prigozhin, the 62-year-old chief known as “Putin’s cook” because of the government catering deals that made him wealthy, was still alive and smiling as he passed the Sued left the city of Rostov-on-Don and not in prison – a far better fate than many Russian observers had predicted for him. Literally, he had survived to fight another day.
Beginning Friday night, in one of the most remarkable 24 hours in modern Russian history, Prigozhin effectively declared war on Russia’s defense ministry, seized a strategic military headquarters near the border with Ukraine, sent a convoy of militants toward Moscow and was labeled a traitor to the president Vladimir Putin – whose own authoritarian aura seemed significantly weakened after Prigozhin’s antics.
And for the first time, Prigozhin, who had previously sworn eternal loyalty to the Russian leader, openly disobeyed him. After long sparing Putin from his otherwise harsh criticism of the way Russia had handled the war in Ukraine, Prigozhin declared that the president had personally made a mistake by labeling him and his Wagner fighters as traitors branded and let the Federal Security Service (FSB) uncover a criminal case.
“As for the betrayal of the motherland, the president is deeply mistaken,” Prigozhin said in an audio message announcing the withdrawal.
“We are patriots of our Fatherland, we fought and continue to fight, all Wagner fighters, and no one intends to go and confess at the request of the President, the FSB or anyone else, because we do not want the country to continue in corruption , fraud and bureaucracy,” he added.
In some respects, Prigozhin’s brazen maneuver clearly failed – his uprising ended without overthrowing his sworn enemies, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the supreme commander of the war in Ukraine, Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov. Prigozhin had been doing this for months, berating them for being incompetent, corrupt and out of touch.
After a brief armed uprising, a mercenary convoy returns from Moscow
All along, Putin allowed the feud between the two fiefdoms to simmer without much intervention, in what analysts rightly predicted was a ticking bomb.
Andrei Soldierov, an expert on Russian security services and a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said Putin clearly sided with Gerasimov and Shoigu against Prigozhin.
“I think they are really happy that they forced Putin to personally intervene in this situation – he is no longer an arbiter, he is on their side, and they can remain silent and show that they are the professionals here waging war and hold out.” against the counter-offensive,” Soldierov said.
Whether intentional or not, Prigozhin showed that Russia is at war not only with Ukraine, but also with itself on many levels. Thousands have fled the country, either dissatisfied with the invasion or afraid to go to war to become, have fled. Others are in prison or living in exile for speaking out against the war or against Putin. And still others, like Prigozhin, supported the war but not the military commanders, who often seemed to screw things up – a disappointment that briefly raised the prospect of civil war in Russia.
Still, Prigozhin might have won some of his other battles. At least he didn’t lose his private mercenary army entirely, as the Kremlin declared that the troops involved in the rebellion would be pardoned. And despite his obscenity, brutality and criminal background — he spent most of the 1980s in prison for robbery and other crimes — Prigozhin won some Russian hearts.
“They tried to break up Wagner,” Prigozhin said, before announcing that he would turn his fighters, who were just over 100 miles from Moscow at the time, to “avoid bloodshed.” This comment suggested that his main motive for the uprising was to combat Shoigu’s Putin-backed demand that all private military formations (which are technically illegal in Russia) sign contracts with the Defense Ministry by July 1.
That would have given Shoigu full control of Wagner, and Prigozhin said he would not sign.
Under Prigozhin’s leadership, Wagner played a central role in the month-long siege of Bakhmut and claimed the capture of the eastern Ukrainian city in late May, marking Moscow’s only significant battlefield gain that year. To win, he used thousands of convicts he recruited from Russian prisons as cannon fodder.
After taking control of Bakhmut, he promptly withdrew his troops and turned the city’s defense over to regular military units. The weekend’s actions, in which heavily armed Wagner fighters seized military facilities, including an airfield, in Rostov-on-Don, did not result in troops being withdrawn from deployment at the front.
But after the departure from Bachmut, Wagner’s role in Ukraine – and the degree of its usefulness to the Kremlin – became unclear. Russian media reported that there was talk of turning Wagner into a military police force in the occupied Ukrainian territories to terrorize deserters and residents, hardly an honorable task for what Prigozhin had touted as the most effective and determined assault force in the war.
“He set the stakes very high and posed as the savior of Russia, but when the Ukrainian counter-offensive began, the army got by without him and Wagner was completely incapacitated,” Soldierov said. “At the same time, the Department of Defense said it was time to sign the contract and he felt like he was cornered on this chessboard.”
“Bakhmut is over, but what’s next,” Soldierov added. “Prigozhin needed to stay in the headlines, but it wasn’t clear how.”
To bolster his public image, Prigozhin embarked on what appeared to be an electoral spree, delivering speeches and holding press conferences across Russia, where he increased his criticism of the military leaders.
Analysts said Putin had no choice but to tolerate it, given Prigozhin’s pledges of loyalty and support for the war. Silencing him would have risked giving credence to Putin’s liberal critics, including jailed political opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has long declared that Putin will not tolerate any truthful dissent.
For nearly nine years, Prigozhin had denied any connection to Wagner and sued journalists for investigations that proved the connection. But last year he came into the public eye when his fighters in Ukraine achieved initial successes in the first months of the war, while the regular army suffered defeats due to strategic misjudgments.
The Kremlin, which had also charred for years claiming that Wagner was completely independent of the Russian state, relied on the mercenaries in the toughest battles of the war, and Putin eventually publicly thanked the group for their accomplishments.
Wagner uprising anticipates Putin’s rule
But sometime last fall, as the regular army in Kherson and Kharkiv suffered embarrassing defeats after surprise Ukrainian offensives, Prigozhin launched a smear campaign against the top leadership.
His constant rants, criticizing the country’s rich and powerful for their perceived lackluster involvement in the war and denouncing major flaws in war strategy, angered many in the Kremlin, and his influence began to wane. At the same time, Prigozhin’s escapades increased his visibility among ordinary Russians and earned him respect from the rank and file, who found him an unlikely truth-teller.
At one point, Prigozhin warned that the war against Ukraine had backfired and that there was a risk of revolution in Russia.
On Saturday, Wagner seized key military installations in Rostov-on-Don, surprisingly without resistance from law enforcement or the military. Even more startling was the public reaction to masked and heavily armed militants who came to challenge the army and Putin: some concern but no sign of panic, and in some cases there was cheering and applause.
“I don’t quite understand what’s happening, maybe it’s all just a ruse, but the Defense Ministry is trying to portray Prigozhin as someone who is against ordinary Russian people, and I know that’s not the case,” Yekaterina said. a Rostov resident whose husband was drafted into combat in Ukraine told the Washington Post on condition that her last name be kept secret so she could speak freely.
“Of course, Prigozhin is not comfortable for them, he tells the truth about the rotten structure of the military and they should get rid of him, but I heard that Wagner fights well,” Yekaterina added.
Some Rostov residents interviewed by The Post said they didn’t care about Wagner’s presence in the city and had become used to strange things happening amid a chaotic “special military operation” by the Kremlin. Some said they stopped watching the news altogether.
In a video clip that has surfaced on social media, an elderly man began yelling at Wagner for disturbing public order while bystanders tried to calm him down. A 60-year-old resident of neighboring Krasnodar Krai, which has long been home to Wagner’s sprawling training base and private chapel, said he believes the group is fighting “for justice.”
“Wagner people don’t touch peaceful people,” said the man. “Prigozhin came to them because the Russian soldiers are not getting enough, because the conditions are bad and everyone is being sent to the slaughterhouse, and Prigozhin will sort things out.”
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What comes next for the caterer-turned-warlord is uncertain. Prigozhin remains subject to Treasury Department sanctions for his role as the owner of internet troll farms that have interfered in US elections. Wagner is still active abroad, particularly in Africa, where he is often paid to provide security for authoritarian rulers. Prigozhin has not yet been spotted in Belarus, where he is due to go under the deal brokered by the country’s powerful President Alexander Lukashenko on Saturday to spare him arrest and prosecution.
But in Russia he obviously found some recognition. Shortly after news broke of his bizarre deal with Putin, Prigozhin made a celebrity farewell as he left Rostov-on-Don in a black SUV. A group of bystanders clapped and cheered him, and one man ran to the car to shake the warlord’s hand.
When the local police showed up downtown after Wagner’s departure, a group of people blocked several cars, booing and shouting, “Shame!”
“The crowd got excited – those who didn’t have time to take a picture or say something made their way to the fighters,” read a report from the scene in the local online newspaper 161.Ru Rostov-on-Don. “People started applauding. The morning fear and anxiety turns into a celebration, with crowds of tipsy people waiting for the fireworks,” the report continued. “Thanks, Wagner!” A man shouted.”
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