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Yevgeny Prigozhin’s brief rebellion was motivated both by personal rivalries and real political differences with the Kremlin.
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- Author: Matt Murphy
- Roll, from BBC News
2 hours ago
The mutiny of Wagner Group mercenaries against Vladimir Putin’s government ended up lasting less than 24 hours. But the “toxic cocktail” of jealousy, rivalry, and ambition that caused the problem has accumulated over months, if not years.
The main characters of this plot are Yevgeny Prigozhin the founder and leader of the paramilitary group Wagner and the leaders of the huge Russian army Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov.
Prigozhin — a former criminal linked to organized crime in the 1980s and who spent several years in prison — is a Kremlin creation. He owes his huge fortune to President Vladimir Putin.
Since the founding of the Wagner mercenary group in 2014, he has become a key tool in Putin’s desire to reassert Russian influence around the world.
From the covert, their fighters — composed of former Russian special forces soldiers — supported Putin’s ally Bashar alAssad in Syria and helped reverse and replace French influence in Mali.
Until last year, Prigozhin denied controlling the group and even sued journalist Elliot Higgins of investigative website Bellingcat in the UK, who accused him of commanding the private militia.
The government’s ease in distancing itself from the Wagner Group’s more controversial operations pleased Putin and allowed Prigozhin to build its own power base over the past year that could rival even the military elite that governs Russia.
A man steeped in violence, corruption and ambition, his rise is emblematic of the state President Vladimir Putin has built over the past 24 years.
But despite his growing power, he remains an outsider in Putin’s small inner circle of advisers, and is not afraid to criticize Moscow officials whom he sees as corrupt, lazy, or both.
And he particularly hates Armed Forces Chief Valery Gerasimov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also an “outsider”.
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Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov have jointly led Russia’s vast army for over a decade
rivalry and vanity
Unlike most of Putin’s top advisers, who tend to hail from the president’s hometown of St. Petersburg, Shoigu was born in a small village on the RussiaMongolia border.
Although Shoigu led the military for more than a decade, he had a civilian career, rising through the ranks of the Communist Party before becoming head of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry in the 1990s.
Gerasimov, the third character in this crisis, is a typical military man. He began his career crushing a bloody uprising in Chechnya in the 1990s and is now the longestserving postSoviet military chief in office.
Prigozhin’s growing prominence in representing Russia’s power and his group’s ability to recruit top Russian special forces personnel by offering them higher salaries are believed to have fueled tensions for several years.
But it was only after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and particularly after the bloody battles at Bakhmut, the battle that is believed to have killed thousands of Wagner soldiers that Prigozhin’s hatred of the military elites surfaced.
The attempt to take Bakhmut a small town with a prewar population of around 70,000 is puzzling.
Most observers believe the campaign is of limited military significance, and some say Prigozhin designed the campaign to secure victory despite the military’s flagging campaign.
He regularly accuses Shoigu and Gerasimov of “constantly trying to steal”. [o crédito pela] Victory of the Wagner Group” in towns like Soledar, where thousands of paramilitary soldiers often recruited from prisons died.
And unlike his more bureaucratic competitors, Prigozhin’s often foul language has made him a figure who frequently attracts the attention of the world’s press.
Leaked documents suggest the Russian Defense Ministry doesn’t know how to counteract its growing popularity.
But in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin was content to let the Kremlin operate freely.
It is Putin’s style to let rivalries grow. He allows competing centers of power to fight each other for influence, believing that one faction cannot gain enough power to challenge him directly.
Daniel Triestman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote last year that Putin’s system contained “traps” to prevent a coup, noting that the authorities “with gunmen under their command were at odds with one another.” Lack of trust to organize a conspiracy”. .
In this regime, Shoigu is kept under control by the Wagner group while mercenaries are intimidated by the military. At the top of the pyramid is Putin, the chess master, who moves pieces around the board and balances the system.
Meanwhile, Prigozhin has been careful not to directly criticize the president, implying that Russia’s failures since the February 2022 invasion were due to Putin being misled by his commanders.
It makes sense for Putin to allow the mercenary leader to blame his subordinates for the failure of the military operation. The Russian president is said to have criticized Shoigu and Gerasimov in particular for the slow pace of the invasion.
But in recent months, this Putin strategy seems to have faltered.
Prigozhin, increasingly enraged by his suspicions that the military was withholding ammunition from its forces during the Bakhmut operation, began posting blatant rants on Telegram.
In one video with the remains of dozens of Wagner fighters visible around him he raged: “You [palavrão] Who doesn’t give us ammunition, you scum, you’ll eat their guts in hell!”
“Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where’s the…ammunition?…They came here as volunteers and died so you could get fat in their marble offices,” he yelled in another video, apparently trying to blackmail Moscow by threatening to demolish the building give up fight for Bachmut.
According to US intelligence documents leaked by American aviator Jack Teixeira, Prigozhin was called to meet Putin and Shoigu on February 22 — the same day he released the video between Wagner’s bodies.
“The meeting almost certainly dealt at least in part with the public allegations against Prigozhin and the resulting tensions with Shoygu,” the document said, with the defense chief’s surname spelled differently.
But the meeting does not appear to have had the desired effect.
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Analysts are now trying to understand the ease with which Wagner troops moved through Russia and occupied key locations.
‘No agreement’
Meanwhile, in Moscow, Shoigu was working on a plan that he hoped would forever diminish his opponent’s influence.
The defense chief is often criticized for not serving as an officer, but his knowledge of how to manipulate Russia’s political system is second to none.
He has lived in the Kremlin since 1991. Few of President Putin’s advisers have spent more time with him.
On June 10, he unveiled his plan to invite “volunteers” to sign contracts directly with the Department of Defense, integrate them into the military, and give them new legal status.
The bill gave volunteer formations until July 1 to complete and sign the contracts.
Although the Wagner Group was not directly mentioned in the ad, it was widely seen as an attempt to reduce Prigozhin’s influence, which immediately aroused the mercenary boss’ anger.
“Wagner will not sign a contract with Shoigu,” Prigozhin scolded. “Shoigu is not managing military training properly.”
The change must have made Prigozhin suspicious. A veteran political actor, Shoigu would not have attempted to take control of Wagner without President Putin’s approval.
Prigozhin may have thought that after months of speeches and criticism of his “special military operation,” the president had finally decided to support his defense chiefs and marginalize his former ally.
Days later, Putin personally backed the move, telling reporters in Moscow that it was “in line with common sense” and everything “should be done as soon as possible.”
Some have suggested that this was when Prigozhin began planning his mutiny. The USbased Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says Prigozhin “probably bet that the only way to keep the Wagner Group as an independent force is to march against the Russian Defense Ministry.”
His troops soon intensified their campaign against the regular military and kidnapped a Russian field commander whom they accused of opening fire on Wagner’s troops.
The US press reports that intelligence officers, after analyzing Wagner’s movements for several days, informed the Biden government that Prigozhin was planning some kind of action.
And on Friday (June 23), the mercenary chief voiced his sharpest criticism of the defense minister to date.
Deviating from Putin’s line that Russia invaded Ukraine to repel NATO and the Nazis, Prigozhin said the conflict was nothing more than an excuse for Shoigu to win more medals and achieve the ultimate military honor, viz to be promoted to the rank of Marshal.
“The Department of Defense is trying to fool the public, fool the President,” he raged in a Telegram video.
That night, less than two weeks after the Defense Ministry announced its plan to take control of the Wagner Group, Prigozhin and his troops left Ukraine and captured the Russian city of Rostov.
Some have speculated that Prigozhin agreed to end his insurgency after receiving concessions from Putin that could include a change at the top of the defense ministry. But whether that’s true remains to be seen.
It’s also unclear who would replace Shoigu and Gerasimov.
General Sergei Surovikin, once a Prigozhin ally but who has spoken out against his mutiny, may be in line for promotion. Known as General Armageddon, he briefly commanded the invasion last year and was behind the ineffective bombing of civilian targets.
What will happen to Prigozhin himself is another question. His decision to halt his advance on Moscow is likely to anger many diehard prowar advocates in Russia. The Institute for the Study of War notes that “many Wagner employees are likely unhappy with the prospect of having to sign contracts with the Department of Defense.”
And it’s unclear whether Prigozhin will be allowed to keep his vast wealth. Russian media reported that around $48 million in cash was found in a raid on Wagner’s St. Petersburg headquarters. Prigozhin said the money was used to compensate families of fallen soldiers.
Although the uprising was crushed early on and the military duo Shoigu and Gerasimov removed a major threat to their power, the conditions that led to the mutiny remain.
There are now about ten private military companies operating in Russia, linked to a group of security officials, oil giants and oligarchs.
According to the US State Department, Shoigu reportedly controls his own company, Patriot PMC, which operates in Ukraine and is in direct competition with Wagner.
The loyalty of these groups to the regime is questionable at best, and may undermine the notion that Putin’s government is better able to weather a protracted conflict in Ukraine than President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government in Kyiv.
“The hopes of part of the Russian elite, including apparently the president himself, that a long war will be beneficial for Russia are a dangerous illusion,” said Ruslan Pukhov, an analyst at the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST). , headquartered in Moscow.
“The continuation of the war poses enormous domestic political risks for the Russian Federation.”