Wagner's genie is out of the bottle

A protracted crisis between Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman and founder of the Wagner paramilitary group, and the Russian Defense Ministry has reached its climax

AFP

Wagner's genie is out of the bottle

Anton Mardasov

last update on 24 Jun 2023

A protracted crisis between Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman and founder of the Wagner paramilitary group, and the Russian Defense Ministry has reached its climax and literally resulted in the most serious crisis for the authorities in the history of modern Russia.

Entry of mercenary units in the center of Rostov-on-Don, the control of a number of military facilities in the Rostov and Voronezh regions, and the desire to move towards Ryazan, Tambov, and even Moscow, have all threatened the stability of Russia.

Needless to say, the Kremlin's foreign policy projects in Africa, which previously relied only on informal ties of the Wagner group with local leaders, are now in fading into oblivion. It is no coincidence that President Vladimir Putin, in a TV address to the Russians, compared the current mercenary revolt to the events of 1917, that is, to the October Revolution in Russia.

Chronology of the ‘Justice March’

On the evening of June 23, Prigozhin accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov of another attempt to destroy the Wagner PMC.

Prigozhin said the Ministry of Defense made the first attempt to destroy the group by not providing them with cover and leaving them under fire of American artillery and aviation, this time Shoigu and Gerasimov gave orders to their own artillery and aviation to bombard the positions of mercenaries in the rear camps. Prigozhin said that Wagner's fighters must stop ‘the evil of the country's military leadership’.

AFP — A member of Wagner group stands guard in a street in the city of Rostov-on-Don, on June 24, 2023

At first, the situation did not seem too serious and even looked like a play designed to attract the attention of Putin.

In recent months, Russian society has become accustomed to Prigozhin's constant criticism of the country's military leadership, and some of his statements have turned into memes.

On the afternoon of June 23, Prigozhin's press service published another interview with his boss, in which he also criticized Shoigu and Gerasimov, accusing the former of starting a war in an attempt to obtain the rank of marshal, the latter of alcoholism and inability to plan military operations, and both of them of misleading Putin.

Some experts, even after the Federal Security Service promptly opened a criminal case under the ‘Armed Rebellion’ article a few hours after Prigozhin's threats to start a "march of justice," still doubted the seriousness of what was happening. Some continued to insist that all of this was an attempt to lull the vigilance of Ukrainian troops trying to continue their counterattack in order to re-engage Wagner PMC in the fighting in Ukraine, which regrouped after the battles for Bakhmut.

Especially since the video published by accounts close to the Wagner PMC, allegedly with the consequences of the strike on the mercenaries' camp looked frankly staged. And Prigozhin initially made all his menacing statements through voice messages in a telegram channel, and according to the metadata, recorded in advance. But most importantly, there were no intelligible photos and video evidence of the mercenary columns' movement inside Russian territory.

The first signal that Prigozhin really played an all-or-nothing game were two video messages distributed by military correspondents on behalf of Army General Sergey Surovikin, deputy commander of the Russian combined group of troops in Ukraine

The first signal that Prigozhin really played an all-or-nothing game were two video messages distributed by military correspondents on behalf of Army General Sergey Surovikin, deputy commander of the Russian combined group of troops in Ukraine, and Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev, first deputy head of the Main Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff. Wagner PMC established a close relationship with the first general during the Syrian war, and then through him actually built communication with cadres of the military in Ukraine.

The other general, according to some reports, is considered the actual founder of the structure of mercenaries, since it was the General Staff that initially initiated the creation of the Wagner group back in 2010.

However, in the morning of June 24 it became known that Wagner's mercenaries promptly occupied all the key facilities in Rostov-on-Don, including the police administration and the headquarters of the Southern Military District.

In the morning of June 24 it became known that Wagner's mercenaries promptly occupied all the key facilities in Rostov-on-Don, including the police administration and the headquarters of the Southern Military District.

Their appearance in the center of the city was so rapid, that passers-by at first thought that these were not mercenaries, but the soldiers of the special units of the Defense Ministry.

Then a video recording of negotiations between Yevgeny Prigozhin and Vladimir Alekseev and Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, a combat general who is respected in the army, was published. According to the recording of their conversation, Prigozhin told Yevkurov that his fighters had shot down three military helicopters with MANPADS that were trying to attack their convoys on the highway among civilian traffic. There were fresh cuts on Prigozhin's face - probably from fragments of ammunition.

Sensitivity of the situation

In his morning address to the Russians on June 24, President Vladimir Putin called the actions of the Wagner PMCs treason and took an unequivocal position on the suppression of the uprising. By doing so, he effectively rejected any agreement with the mercenaries and stopped speculation by officials that the resignation of Shoigu and Gerasimov would help to calm down the rampaging Prigozhin.

However, in practice it is not so easy to do. Judging by how quickly the Wagner PMC managed to seize the military bases in the Rostov and Voronezh regions, as well as to threaten the Tambov, Ryazan and Moscow regions, the local law enforcement agencies were not ready to seriously resist the battle-hardened units.

Given the number of even official casualties since the invasion in 2022, the lack of clear success on the front, and the involvement of mobilized citizens in the conflict, there are indeed reasons for discontent among the military, the special services, and ordinary Russians. Senior officers will undoubtedly remain on the side of the authorities, but as for the rank-and-file and lower-ranking officers who must directly suppress the insurgency, the big question is how willing they are to shoot their own people.

AFP — Members of Wagner group inspect a car in a street of Rostov-on-Don, on June 24, 2023.

Actually, this was obviously the main calculation of Prigozhin and his Wagner commanders - they are unlikely to be attacked from the air within the city limits, as they were in the rear camps (if this attack actually took place). Control over a major city and facilities directly involved in the war in Ukraine, however, is a negotiating asset. However, Prigozhin's future plans are completely unclear. If any elite groups supported his past outbursts in the direction of military and political leadership, in the current circumstances, they are likely to have already disowned him.

The situation with the current seizure of the city center is essentially reminiscent of the situation with the seizure of the hospital in Budyonnovsk by Chechen field commander Basayev in 1995: then they demanded to stop military action in Chechnya and enter into negotiations with Dzhokhar Dudayev. The comparison may seem incorrect, given that the mercenaries are extremely polite to the local population of Russian regions, but there is a similarity even in the fact that Russian law has applied the article on armed rebellion to Basayev's fighters as well.

It turns out that the Wagner PMC project is doomed a priority, and reaches its last days or weeks, because it is possible that this story will drag on. And its failure will hit Russia, not only domestically, but also abroad, as there will be no one to replace Prigozhin's units in Libya, the CAR and other countries.

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