Why Did Wagner Turn on Putin and What Does It Mean for Ukraine?
Emma Graham-Harrison Guardian UK
Created in the early 2010s, Wagner Group is a paramilitary mercenary group composed mostly of former Russian military personnel that trains local forces, conducts combat advising, and provides direct-action services. (photo: Creative Commons)
ALSO SEE: Prigozhin, the Mercenary Chief Urging
an Uprising Against Russia's Generals, Has Long Ties to Putin
The mercenaries’ leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was once close to the Russian president. Now he is a major threat
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has accused Prigozhin of treason and vowed to “neutralise” the uprising.
Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin?
The man now raising a force against Moscow is a former convict and hotdog seller, notorious for his ruthlessness, violence and cruelty.
Born in St Petersburg in 1961, he went to a sporting academy but fell in with petty criminals. Convicted of several violent robberies in 1980, he spent most of his 20s in jail.
Released in 1990 as the Soviet Union was in its death throes, he made his first modest fortune with a fast food stand, but soon had a stake in a supermarket chain, one of the best restaurants in his home city, and the ear and trust of powerful figures, including one Vladimir Putin.
Prigozhin spent more than a decade doing the catering for high-profile official events – photos show him serving Prince Charles and George Bush among others – and building up to oligarch levels of wealth through government catering contracts and other deals.
The seeds of the current insurrection were sown nearly a decade ago when Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula and sent proxy forces into eastern Ukraine. Prigozhin then founded the Wagner mercenary group, which gave Putin a tool for more active military intervention and some degree of plausible deniability.
Prigozhin also set up an army of keyboard trolls, and was indicted in the US for interfering – through his digital warriors – in the 2016 election that brought Trump to power.
Until last year, Prigozhin sued journalists who linked him to these activities, and insisted he only worked in catering and hospitality.
How did he create a private army?
Prigozhin built Wagner into a powerful force over years of interventions across Africa, the Middle East and more recently Ukraine. Syria was the first place Prigozhin’s men established themselves as a formidable fighting force, playing a prominent, if often unacknowledged, role in Moscow’s support of Bashar al-Assad.
They set a pattern which would play out again in Ukraine, operating with impunity, accused of numerous war crimes and taking heavy losses, under commanders not afraid to sacrifice their men.
Wagner troops later fought across Africa, on missions that favoured Russian interests, including in Mali, the Central African Republic and Sudan. He was allowed to recruit in prisons last year, swelling the ranks of his soldiers to about 50,000 men, according to western intelligence analysts.
What resources and support does he have now?
Prigozhin’s character and way of operating stoked tensions with Russia’s conventional military for years, but the feud deepened in recent months.
He launched public broadsides accusing top generals of starving his troops of ammunition and other supplies, and leaving them to die. One video was recorded against a gruesome backdrop of dozens of corpses of Wagner fighters.
His fighters’ crucial combat role in Ukraine, especially in the grinding battle for Bakhmut, means they have supplies of weapons and armoured vehicles.
Some are moving towards Moscow in a column that could be vulnerable to air attacks, though video from the ground apparently shows them deploying air defences.
It is unlikely Wagner’s fighters, for all their experience and discipline, could hold out indefinitely against the full might of the Russian military.
Prigozhin, who does have better ties with some generals, is probably hoping for defections, or perhaps for those worn down by corruption and other failings to stay on the sidelines as he fights it out with his enemies.
What does this mean for Ukraine?
It is impossible to know how this showdown will play out. But whether Prigozhin prevails or fails – most experts think failure is more likely – the fighting is likely to benefit Ukraine.
Focus, weapons and troops are all being shifted away from the frontlines, as Kyiv intensifies its counter-offensive. Prigozhin has said he doesn’t want the war effort to suffer, but Russia’s generals will be forced – at least for now – to concentrate on events at home, even if fighting is limited.
And with Chechen troops reportedly already on their way towards Rostov, where Wagner men have seized military headquarters, any battles in the area will consume lives, weaponry and time.
Whoever ends up in control in Moscow will have to shore up power and authority at home, while trying to fight in Ukraine.
What does it mean beyond Ukraine?
Wagner has been a useful tool of Russian foreign policy and power projection, its troops supporting allies, and providing a warning to those not heeding messages from Moscow.
It is unlikely that Putin can immediately replace this arm’s-length mercenary force, even if he choses to ignore messages from this uprising. The leaders who relied on Wagner support are likely to be reassessing their security.
