Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine involves many other wars, all of which are now very private. Even the Russian President has started a war for reasons related to the power he would like to have perpetuated, and to advance it he relies on other people, also guided by personal interests. Among them are the faithful like Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who with his men never stops showing allegiance to the President, claims conquests for himself and fights no matter what, believing that it can be done with money, more power and harsh repression everyone who wishes for a Chechnya without him and Putin will be rewarded. Then there are the mercenaries lined up behind you Yevgeny Prigozhinwhich has instead become a problem for Putin.
Prigozhin is known as Putin’s cook, but said in a recent interview that he should have been called “Putin’s butcher.” He definitely can’t cook. It took part in the Kremlin wars where the Kremlin pretended not to be present, such as in Libya, the Central African Republic or Sudan. Or in Ukraine itself, when the war was limited to the Donbas. Prigozhin with his wagner captured the city of Bakhmut after seven months, emerged in the devastated center with the Russian flag in hand, and was filmed a few days later giving instructions to his men to complete the retreat from the city on June 1 and leave the positions of the regular army, which reports to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. It was important for Prigozhin to show that he can conquer the city. Now he doesn’t care if the army can hold them, he doesn’t suspect it, but his private war had this primary goal: to show the difference between who wins and who loses on the battlefield, between a leader going to the front him, and the one who stays in Moscow, Shoigu. He doesn’t care about the Ukrainians, his private war is against the Kremlin, against the armed forces, against the defense minister.
Journalists from the Moscow Times website took to the streets of Moscow to ask people if they knew Prigozhin. Russians don’t like to talk about public figures, especially in front of the camera and even less when dealing with the Kremlin. Almost everyone replied that they knew him, someone said he was a cook – butcher, he would say – someone said with some embarrassment that he was Wagner’s boss: before the invasion of Ukraine it was unthinkable to talk about the company Mercenary, admit its existence and give it a leader. All abstained from judging the matter. Prigozhin acts like a populist, he knows the best tactics, he communicates via telegram, knowing full well that the Russians will learn a lot about the application. When he speaks, he knows who to address and why: only vaguely refers to Putin, without ever calling him by name, because the president’s taboo has not yet been lifted, attacks Shoigu directly and, above all, the sons of men in Russian politics and speaks of corruption. He knows that in war there are families with children, some of whom left the war hoping to bring money back alive or dead, which is why he insists so much on the life that the children of Russian generals lead instead: he wants to ignite anger, the feeling of injustice. It’s hard to tell if he’s really interested in politics or just playing the puppeteer, but his war, which is bad for Ukraine, is actually aimed at his compatriots.
The Kremlin understood that, but it is too late. Prigozhin has always been entrusted with matters close to Putin’s heart, he knows a lot, he knows too much, he is still indispensable. Meanwhile, however, the Russian company Gazprom is trying to take Prigozhin’s place and has its own mercenary militias fighting in Ukraine. On the battlefield there is already a group called Potok – it means “flow”, in Russian the gas pipeline we call Nord Stream is called Severnyj potok, an energy multinational could not have chosen otherwise – which would have presented itself on the battlefield at Bakhmut Fight with Wagner. Coexistence did not go well at all: it was not about conquering the rubble of the Ukrainian city, but for everyone it was about conquering it before the others. Prigozhin won, not so much against Kiev as against the other groups.
Private wars in the war against Ukraine are among the reasons why Putin’s invasion failed, and now that everyone has their own claims and recipes for victory, now that Prigozhin has talked as much and threatened as much, fragmentation can only still increase.