Sometimes brothers in arms trade bad words. “Stop babbling and shouting, name a place and we’ll solve any problems face to face,” Adam Delimkhanov, a confidant of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, recently told Yevgeny Prigozhin. “We all know how many people you burned at Bachmut.” Delimkhanov himself is a Duma deputy and a “volunteer” in the special unit “Achmat”, one of the four Chechen battalions fighting in Ukraine.
Kadyrov had already announced a major attack by his mountain warriors on the Donetsk region, but Prigozhin publicly doubted that the Chechens would succeed in liberating the entire “Donetsk People’s Republic”.
Internal policy goals?
In the meantime, there was a public reconciliation, but Delimkhanov is said to have been attacked near Mariupol. It has been unclear for days if he is dead, injured or otherwise in good health. The manners among Russia’s mercenary leaders are reminiscent of the gangsters of the nineties. And with the growing number of private bodies roaming Ukraine’s battlefields, observers wonder what their bosses’ domestic ulterior motives are. “Kadyrov and Prigozhin want to have their own army if Russia collapses,” former US general Ben Hodges suspected to Ukrainian TV station 24Kanal. Is there really a war of mercenary troops in Russia, where mercenary work is prohibited on paper?
Prigozhin’s Wagner troupe is not alone
The most famous and probably also the most powerful troop is the “Private War Company (Russian for short: TschWK) Wagner”. Up to 80,000 men are said to have been under Prigozhin’s eloquent command during the Battle of Bakhmut. Putin’s trained and intimate restaurant entrepreneur has made a name for himself as a right-wing political extremist with high victory reports and verbal attacks on the Ministry of Defense. And he describes Wagner as “the best army in the world”.
However, his ChWK left the front after heavy losses at Bachmut. Only 20,000 mercenaries are believed to be operational. Prigozhin, however, is demanding that Wagner be increased to 200,000 men, which would finally challenge Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s regular army monopoly on the use of force in foreign policy.
“TikTok Warrior”
No wonder the Chechen competition is raging. His boss, Kadyrov, also loudly praises the accomplishments of his roughly 20,000 men, 7,000 of whom are said to be fighting in Ukraine. But unlike Prigozhin, who meanwhile was recruiting prisoners from prison camps across Russia, Kadyrov sees his fighters as a national domestic power. And military patriots are already calling Achmat’s battalions “TikTok warriors” because the Chechen chief is reluctant to send his fellow tribesmen to the front.
There are quieter Russian Freikorps in Ukraine. For example, the “ChVK Redut”, according to the Financial Times, a unit of 7,000 heads. It is said to have been funded by Putin’s close friend Gennady Timchenko and used to protect his phosphate extraction sites in Syria. Or the “Ural” battalion, writes the Moscow Times that Igor Altushkin, another dollar billionaire, formed it. But Altushkin’s press office denies any connection to the battalion. Timchenko is also silent about Redut, whose mercenaries would be commanded by FSB and GRU intelligence officers. Apparently, like military investors, none of them have political ambitions beyond showing their patriotic wartime loyalty to Putin.
Gazprom also got involved
Russia’s largest state-owned company, Gazprom, is said to have started forming three mercenary troops earlier in the year: “Potok” (as Stream), “Fakel” and “Plamja” (flame). How many bayonets they count is unclear, at least Potok fought in Bachmut. But it is suspected that the group formed the units, said to be made up mostly of security guards but hardly any engineers, to control which personnel go to the front themselves. And Gazprom does not appear to be investing large sums in Potok. In April, several fighters turned to Putin in a video and complained about a lack of equipment and supplies.
Gazprom certainly does not consider these troops to be a domestic power factor. And according to the BBC, Potok is commanded in the field by ChVK Redut, which in turn reports to the MoD. Other bodies obey the same chain of command, such as the “Don” Cossack Brigade or the “Union of Donbass Volunteers”. It is unclear which troops are actually fighting as an independent unit. “Some seem to exist only on paper,” says political scientist Yuriy Korgonyuk. In any case, most of them lack media presence commanders with political ambition. Instead, there are troop complaints that promised bonuses for wounded or killed are not being released. “Don deceives people too,” Maxim told Radio Swoboda. “They don’t even pay the funeral expenses.” There is a lot to suggest that some of the associations were just created so that fewer volunteers would join the army than regular regular soldiers. They all receive monthly salaries of around 2200 euros, but they can sue the army for financial claims more easily …
Twos may have intentions other than money
Almost no complaints are heard from the fighters of Wagner or Achmat. At least Prigozchin or Kadyrov are thinking more about politics than their own pockets. But Kadyrov has been sticking to the line for a long time. And his elite unit, Achmat, promptly followed a Ministry of Defense order for all “volunteer units” to report to the Ministry by contract. Although Chechens, as part of the National Guard, were regulars long before that. But Prigozhin repeatedly announced that the contract would not be signed. “No ChWK Wagner fighter is willing to walk the path of shame.”
Political scientist Korgonyuk believes that for the time being Prigozhin and Kadyrov, like Minister Shoigu, are fighting only for the favor of the head of state. “Only when Putin is no more will his private troops attack each other.”