The Wagner’s dome it has been completely decapitated. In the executive plane Embraer 135 who collapsed on Wednesday afternoon in a field in the Tver region, halfway between St. Petersburg and Moscownot only was their leader traveling, Yevgeny Prigozhin. The number two of the group, Dmitry Utkinex-commander of the Russian military reserve with Nazi tattoos and to whom the British intelligence services attribute sympathies towards the Third Reichand Valery Chekalov, a businessman in charge of the business side of the mercenary group, as well as supervising the contracts to supply food to the soldiers. All this raises enormous unknowns regarding the future of the group as a unit, giving way to the idea that the lucrative activities of the mercenary militia on the African continent are taken over by businessmen either trust officers of Vladimir Putin.
Desolation reigned during the commemorative act which was held in front of the militia headquarters in Saint Petersburg, the former capital of the tsars. No one, yes, dared to mention the causes of the incident, much less to point out possible perpetrators. “It’s horrible; in Francewhen he died charles de gaulle, it was said that the country had been orphaned; for me, from tonight Russia has been left an orphan,” a man from 36 years. “It’s like losing a parent, it meant everything to us, we always waited to hear what ‘Uncle Jenna’ was going to say,” said Igor, a man whose cap wore a skull and one russian flag.
Possible new coup
Analysts believe that this unease and indignation over the death, in such circumstances, of a military leader who had shown great efficiencyboth in his controversial actions to control entire states in Africa, and in the battlefield in Ukraine, it could spread to ultra-nationalist sectors and even to the Army, “which view with disdain the way in which the war is being carried out,” he opines Matthew Orranalyst of RANENetwork, a risk advisory based in New York. “Many people are going to be outraged by this apparent assassination” intended to “demonstrate” that attempts at rebellion against the Kremlin leader are paid “with a price very high“.
Hristo Grozeva Bulgarian journalist who works for Bellingcat, an investigative website on Russian issues, goes further and even dares to predict a new coup against Vladimir Putin, who, in his opinion, had no choice but to remove it. “If you’re a mob boss but you let someone throw a gauntlet at you without taking it out afterwards, then you’re nobody, which is why Putin had to send this creepy message their opponents,” he declared, according to reports on Bulgarian television NovaTV. These military and far-right circles in which Prigozhin was popular “will not forget what Putin has done with his idol and they will always wait for a more appropriate moment to organize a coup”, predicts the journalist. “They even tell me Russian elite people with whom I am in contact”, he concludes.
With links to intelligence
Regarding the future of Wagner as a group, most experts believe that the body will remain, although it is most likely that the Kremlin will put a personality in charge no political ambitions and with links to intelligence services, where Putin and his entourage come from. “The organization will survive in the future, probably under another name“, since “it has shown that it has the capacity to adapt and transform”, it has predicted to the BBC Joana de Deus Pereirasenior researcher at Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a London-based think tank on security and defense issues. “We have to look at Wagner not as a single man, but as a an ecosystemlike a hydra with many, many heads and many interests in Africa,” he explains.
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Regarding what may happen with Wagner’s operations on that continent, there is a consensus that the process originated years ago by the Kremlin to control resources and entire states will continue, in a form yet to be determined. Nathalia Dukhansenior researcher at The Sentrya website that investigates the predatory transnational organizations that produced the report Architects of Terror on the penetration of the militia in the Central African Republic (CAR), notes that “regardless of what may have happened to Prigozhin, the Kremlin’s strategy of placing the African continent more in its orbit of power and exploitation remains”. direct increase of the role of the Russian government.” “The international community should not take its eyes off this predatory entity,” he concludes.
In Belarus, where a good number of troops had been deployed, the presence of Wagner’s mercenaries is less threatening than after the coup. “Are between 4,000 and 6,000 troops“and they do not have the capacity to carry out provocative operations, affirms the expert Orr, from RANENetwork. The impact on the war fronts in Ukraine also will be minimalGiven that, since the June riot, Wagner was practically inoperative, since his troops had either been taken over by the Army, or deployed in Belarus.