The bomb has finally burst. Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, founder and boss of the private army of the Wagner Group, had been at war with the Russian authorities for months. With Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, with General Valery Gerasimov, commander of the Russian armed forces, and even with President Vladimir Putin, the man for whom Prigozhin once worked as a Kremlin caterer. Now Prigozhin (62) is standing with his mercenary army in Rostov-on-Don, and threatens to steam up to Moscow to take revenge on the Russian establishment that, in his eyes, has thwarted him too often. Time will tell whether the Wagner uprising actually leads to a power grab in the Kremlin.
The germ of the conflict probably lies in the special position that Prigozhijn occupies with his Wagner Group in Russia. Not part of the Russian armed forces, but fighting for the same cause. Until this weekend, anyway. Prigozhin had not been commanded by the commanders in Moscow for months.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February last year, Prigozhin has played a special role in the war. With his mercenary army, he mainly operated as a regional warlord in the Donbas, the region that Russia has been trying to separate from Ukraine since 2014. One of the main reasons why Prigozhin is suddenly a major problem for the Kremlin is the fact that he has been successful on the battlefield.
While most of the Russian troops in the occupied parts of Ukraine were forced onto the defensive shortly after the invasion, the Wagner Group was able to carry out offensives in the Donbas well into the spring. The extremely bloody battle for Bachmut, the Ukrainian mining town that had been under fire for months from the Wagner Group, finally brought Prigozhin success, although the losses on his side must have been colossal.
In the battle for Bachmut, the mercenary boss from St. Petersburg became especially notorious for his extremely brutal war practices – such as the deployment of thousands of ex-prisoners who were chased to death in endless waves of attacks on Ukrainian positions. Prigozhin’s reign of terror over his own troops has been extensively described in the course of the war; soldiers who wanted to desert or refused to obey orders were executed without mercy. The images of a bloodied sledgehammer next to a chopping block have spread like wildfire on social media in recent months: smashing the skull is reportedly Wagner’s way of retaliating against deserters and other rebellious mercenaries.
Chef
In the course of Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, Prigozhin increasingly became a problem for Moscow. Putin’s lenient treatment of the former chef-turned-warlord must have contributed to Prigozhin’s success on the frontline. Bachmut, which fell to Wagner forces this spring after a months-long siege, was one of the few military bright spots in the operation in Ukraine from a Kremlin perspective. Bachmut had become symbolically important to Moscow – proof that the Russian operation in Ukraine was still making progress.
It gave Prigozhin a special position in Russia. And he should be well aware of that. Prigozhin was one of the few in the country who dared to openly criticize the Kremlin and the Defense Ministry, the chiefs of the armed forces. He was one of the few in Russia to name the military blunders Russia committed during and after the invasion of Ukraine, and denounced those responsible, accusing them of “incompetence”.
Minister of Defense Shoygoe in particular has to pay for it. In long, filmed diatribes, full of swear words and insults, Prigozhin lashed out at those responsible for the war in Moscow from the front lines near Bachmut. At the beginning of this year, when Prigozhin’s troops at Bachmut were the only part of the Russian armed forces still on the offensive, relations with Moscow deteriorated visibly. Prigozhin pushed the boundaries further and further.
It exploded in February. When Putin gave an important speech in Moscow, Prigozhin not only deliberately kept aloof, he publicly accused the Russian defense leadership of deliberately withholding much-needed war material from Wagner troops. “The Chief of the General Staff and the Defense Minister are issuing orders left and right in which not only ammunition should not be given to Wagner, but also no air transport support,” Prigozhin complained that day. in a statement. Even shovels with which his men can dig trenches at the front were no longer sent, Prigozhin said.
He called it “direct opposition” and “nothing less than an attempt to destroy Wagner.” He even likened it to “betrayal”, at a time when hundreds of his fighters “fight for Bachmut”. According to him, his soldiers are dying “like flies”, because they are insufficiently equipped by Moscow. In the weeks that followed, he repeated his swear words several times. In May, Putin also suffered: Prigozhin seemed to refer to the president himself when he mockingly spoke of “a happy grandpa”.
Bachmoth
After the complete capture of Bachmut in May, Prigozhin announced his withdrawal from the city. In the following weeks, he turned the city over to the regular Russian forces. The troops of the Wagner Group, believed to still number tens of thousands of fighters, retreated towards the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, where the southern headquarters of the Russian forces, as well as Wagner’s, are located.
His warnings and threats to the Russian defense top have become louder in recent times. Prigozhin accused the Kremlin of invading Ukraine under false pretenses; that Ukraine posed no threat to Russia and had no plans for a counter-offensive in the Donbas last year. He accused the military leadership and the defense ministry of withholding information about the true course of the war from Putin for fear of reprisals.
In the middle of this month, the Ministry of Defense in Moscow tried to bring Prigozhin into line by making him sign a contract stating that he is under the command of the Defense Forces. Prigozhin refused with his now familiar way of communicating.
The open mutiny against Moscow seems to have turned into a full-blown uprising – armed and all. The coming weeks will show whether Putin succeeds in calling the warlord to order and regaining calm.