Berkhivka is a village of about 120 people, but there shouldn’t be many of them anyway because of the intense fighting for neighboring Bakhmut. Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has now declared that his Wagner troupe has captured this eastern Ukrainian village. With this, Prigozhin achieved a small military success, presumably he introduced it mainly to the Ministry of Defense of Russia. With that he performs his own very strange fight.
Prigozhin and his private mercenary army are brutally involved in the Russian war of conquest in Ukraine, increasingly in competition with the official army. On Wednesday, Prigozhin posted a photo of dozens of bodies lying on the frozen ground. It was his fighters, he explained, who died of “ammunition starvation”.
The culprits are those who should have clarified the question “how did we get enough ammo”. The mercenary chief had already asked the Ministry of Defense for ammunition for his frontline fighters every day for a week. He even went so far as to accuse Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu and Russian Chief of General Staff Valeriy Gerasimov of high treason. On Thursday, Prigozhin’s press service confirmed that the necessary ammunition was finally brought in at 6 am and was being unloaded.
Is Private Army Chief Wagner a threat to the regular army?
According to these statements, ordinary Russians would not have to wait long for his arrest, but Prigozhin has long had an unofficial special status. President Vladimir Putin largely allows him to stay in Ukraine, the Russian army’s many setbacks prompted him to do so. Prigozhin was even allowed to recruit thousands of Russian prisoners, although this practice was recently declared ended. But the power struggle with the Russian military leadership should still be interesting.
The ministry itself initially reacted to the ammunition debate with restraint, speaking of “exalted statements about the alleged blockade of ammunition for voluntary assault units”. The name of the Wagner mercenary group did not appear. The Ministry of Defense criticized attempts at division merely playing into the enemy’s hands.
The relationship can end quickly and without warning.
Prigozhin, who with his paramilitary organization is strengthening Russia’s influence in Mali, Central Africa and Libya, and in some cases even has licenses to exploit raw materials, is considered a confidant of Kremlin chief Putin. Above all, his confidant is Defense Minister Shojgu, who has spent several vacations with Putin. Prigozhin’s massive attack on Putin’s favorite minister could mean that criticism of military failures is deliberately kept from Putin in this way. After all, Putin himself is the supreme commander of the armed forces and responsible for the state of the army.
Russian political scientist Tatyana Stanovaya writes in an article in The Moscow Times that Shoygu and Gerasimov convinced Putin that Prigozhin was a threat to the army. Which is why Putin put Gerasimov in charge of the war in Ukraine in January. And that too, says Stanovaya, despite everything Prigozhin has dared to do so far: “His relationship with the state is informal and therefore fragile. And it could end without warning.”