1 / 3 Photo: Prigozhin’s own press staff via AP/TT
The military leadership in Moscow wants to put a formal leash on the freewheeling Wagner group as the Ukraine war escalates.
The leader of the mercenaries – who are in constant and loud arguments with the Russian generals – refuses.
All independent units fighting on the Russian side must from now on sign state contracts, the Ministry of Defense in Moscow announced on Sunday.
In practice, this means above all that the Wagner group, which has been at the forefront of several of the bloodiest battles in Ukraine, is formally forced under the Kremlin’s umbrella.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is said to have been well aware that it would not go down well.
“The Wagner Group will not sign any contracts with Shoigu,” announces the leader of the paramilitary group Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Prigozhin claims that his forces are better than the regular army and believes that the Russian General Staff therefore wants to clear them out of the way out of pure jealousy.
“Sitting in their offices”
The quarrel between Prigozhin and Shoigu has been going on in front of open curtains for more than a year.
The military leadership in Moscow has allowed Wagner soldiers to go to the front line in several of the bloodiest battles, such as those for the now destroyed city of Bachmut. The Wagner leader has said that he was prejudiced and taken advantage of, whereupon he has directed furious accusations and invective against Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov. Among other things, he has called them traitors and “asses who just sit in their offices and get fat”.
– Wow! Gerasimov! Where’s my damn ammunition, Yevgeny Prigozhin bellowed in a video clip in May as Wagner forces were about to hand over control of Bachmut to the army.
In the dark clip, the screaming leader walked around and showed mangled corpses lined up on a lawn.
The Russian military has barely mentioned the Wagner Group’s contribution to the capture of Bachmut.
Putin chooses a side?
Vladimir Putin has long-standing relations with both Shoigu and Prigozhin. The president has not spoken openly about the Russian infighting, although he formally congratulated Wagner on success in Bachmut. On Tuesday, however, it was clear that he supports the directive that all units must obey the military.
– We need to do this as soon as possible, he said on Tuesday in an arranged meeting with a group of Kremlin-loyal military bloggers, reports the Russian news agency Interfax.
Chechnya’s hardline leader Ramzan Kadyrov has previously made common cause with Prigozhin in the dispute with Moscow. Now he announces that his forces will follow the directive.
The Wagner Group has long operated in a legal vacuum as private armies are formally prohibited in Russia. It has previously been of the utmost importance for the Russian regime to keep an arm’s length distance from the group accused of war crimes. Now it is so prominent and its leader so outspoken that it has become difficult.
Goes against the propaganda
Yevgeny Prigozhin goes against the Kremlin’s propaganda image of the war and how Russia is doing in it. He questions Putin’s lies about Ukraine being run by Nazis and has described it as the Russians having “screwed up and retreated” on several occasions.
The Wagner leader has amassed a large fortune through lucrative contracts awarded to him by the Kremlin. He basically has a monopoly position for the Russian military’s food supply, but he now says he wants to tear up those contracts.
The group’s soldiers are recovering from Bachmut and are ready for new missions in August, Prigozhin said at an appearance in Russia on Tuesday. But he has also said that it is unclear whether Wagner will return to Ukraine.
“We will solve it. As they say: When the storm breaks, they will come running with weapons and ammunition and plead for help”, reads one of the Wagner leader’s many eloquent statements on social media.
FACTS
The Wagner group
The Wagner group is a private mercenary company with unofficial connections to the Russian state leadership.
Its top leader and chief financier is Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former restaurateur from St. Petersburg who has close ties to Vladimir Putin and made a fortune from preferential procurement.
The Wagner group is deemed to have been allowed to carry out missions around the world for which the Russian state or army does not want to take responsibility or have to account for. Under Prigozhin’s corporate umbrella there are also well-known so-called troll factories that have been used in attempts to influence other countries’ elections.
Wagner was first mentioned in connection with Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, when soldiers entered there without designation. Later, it has appeared in many countries where Russia seeks influence: Syria, Libya, Sudan, Venezuela, the Central African Republic and others. It is followed by allegations of war crimes.
The Wagner group led a shadowy existence for a long time, but in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has taken a more formal and prominent role, alongside and sometimes in some competition with the Russian army. Tens of thousands of its fighters, many recruited from prisons, are estimated to have been killed.
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