Wagner's Show of Force
A man known as "Putin's chef" has shaken up Russia, but what's really cooking up?
This piece was originally published by the Morgenbladet in the morning on June 26. It doesn’t reflect further developments during the day, including Putin’s and Prigozhin’s statements in the evening.
What looked like civil war in Russia lasted for exactly one day and ended as strangely as it started. The events left more questions than answers as well as a nagging feeling that there will be more insane twists in this story.
The crisis was building over many months as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of a private army known as Wagner Group, engaged in a public spat with the Russian defence ministry over how to wage war in Ukraine. As their conflict progressed, the ministry ordered all mercenaries participating in the war to sign contracts with the army. Prigozhin said his troops were not going to obey.
The standoff reached climax on Friday night. Just after 9pm, Prigozhin posted an audio statement in which he claimed that the Russian army had delivered missile strikes on Wagner’s field camp, killing a “huge number” of his soldiers.
Sixteen minutes later, he spoke again, saying that Wagner was going to rid Russia of the evil in the shape of its top military brass and that anyone who stood in the way would be eliminated.
In the morning, Prigozhin’s troops entered the southern city of Rostov securing the Russian army’s HQ, which happens to be the main command centre for the war in Ukraine. A video released by Prigozhin’s press service at that point showed him telling deputy defence minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov that his troops had already downed three Russian aircraft and promising to shoot down more (they would destroy another four by the end of the day, according to Russian sources).
At 10am, Vladimir Putin went on TV announcing that his government was dealing with an armed mutiny and an act of treason. The response of the state will be tough, Putin pledged; the traitors will not avoid punishment. He proceeded to announce a form of martial law in Moscow, Rostov and other regions on Wagner’s route.
Prigozhin responded by saying that Wagner Group was not going to obey the president. “We are Russian patriots and those who are against us are being rallied by scoundrels”, he said.
Meanwhile, a column of Wagner’s fighting vehicles sped along the M4 highway going at least as far as Elets, some 400 kilometres south of Moscow. The authorities began setting up roadblocks on the approaches to the capital.
The West and Ukraine met the news with a mix of concern and wishful thinking. Many commentators expressed hope that the putsch could potentially precipitate the end of Putin’s regime. The Wall Street Journal reported, quoting an unnamed source, that the State Department was set to delay a new round of sanctions against Wagner Group in the view of the developments. If that really was the intention, this readiness to appease Prigozhin, who stands accused of multiple war crimes, looks very troubling.
But it all ended just as abruptly as it started. At 8pm, Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko made a spectacular stage entry by announcing, via his press service, that he had reached a deal with Prigozhin, serving as mediator between him and the Kremlin. Wagner would withdraw its troops. Other details remained unclear.
Soon Prigozhin announced that his troops were indeed heading back to their field camps in order “to avoid bloodshed”. There was no word about any goals his show of force has or hasn’t reached.
When details of the agreement emerged from the Kremlin, it sounded like Prigozhin’s complete defeat. His main demand - to dismiss defence minister Sergey Shoygu and chief of staff Valery Gerasimov was not addressed at all.
Instead, Prigozhin was to go into exile in Belarus. A part of Wagner troops that did not participate in the coup attempt would sign contracts with the ministry of defence - something Prigozhin resisted with all his might prior to the events. The fate of the others was not specified.
Later that night, pictures emerged of Prigozhin departing the army HQ in Rostov in an SUV, cheered by a modest crowd of local supporters.
The Bodyguard
Russia watchers were presented with a puzzle to solve. What was it? An emotional breakdown by a person whose private army served as gunpowder in the protracted battle of Bakhmut?
Or perhaps a part of a bigger intrigue stemming from power struggle inside the Kremlin? A war of Kremlin’s towers, as they say in Russia.
Some details pointed towards the latter option. Firstly, there was only slim evidence that the strike on Prigozhin’s camp did really happened - the fact pointed out by prominent commentators, such as Bellingcat’s founder Elliot Higgins.
But even if Prigozhin didn’t lie about it, it is hard to believe that Wagner’s march was an act of spontaneous outrage. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that the US intelligence was aware of Prigozhin’s intentions already in the middle of June.
A possibility of course remains that Putin did agree to dismiss Shoygu and Gerasimov (or at least one of them), but to do it later and avoid the loss of face. If any of them depart from their posts in the foreseeable future, honourably or not, the putsch will suddenly make a lot more sense.
Worth a note in this respect is the alleged role of Tula governor Aleksey Dyumin in defusing the crisis. Some of the Russian sources claimed that Dyumin was in fact the chief negotiator for most of the day until Lukashenko stepped in to finalise the agreement. Dyumin’s office denied it in a statement.
As dust settled after Wagner’s mutiny, influential pro-war bloggers on Telegram started circulating rumours of Dyumin imminently replacing Shoygu.
Tula is a fairly small region, which happened to stand on the way of Wagner’s column heading for Moscow. Interestingly it is also the only one that didn’t declare martial law. But Dyumin is more than a mere regional official.
For once, he used to be Putin’s bodyguard. His subsequent biography is a bit of a mystery, which mainly revolves around his alleged link to the GRU (the military intelligence agency) and his role in the war in Ukraine.
Various Russian media claimed, with no official confirmation, that Dyumin was GRU’s deputy head in charge of the agency’s special forces in 2014, during the Russian occupation of Crimea. At the end of 2015, he was appointed Shoygu’s deputy, but his stint at the defence ministry lasted for just over a month whereupon he became the governor of Tula.
But the biggest reason he stands out in the crowd of Russian officials is that circa 2017 he featured prominently in the Russian and Western media as a potential successor to Vladimir Putin.
Said that, even if he really played any role in the negotiations, it could be in his old capacity of a professional fixer who keeps relatively low profile due to the nature of his craft. His alleged GRU connection does matter though.
Wagner Group is known as a product of Russian military intelligence. Prominent researchers of Russian secret services, Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan, specify in their Foreign Policy piece that it is a product of GRU’s Spetsnaz - the crack troops used the agency in its secret missions.
It is these troops which Dyumin was allegedly in charge of back in 2014-15 when Wagner Group came into existence - as a deniable force for dirty and delicate missions, clearly modelled on America’s Blackwater. Prigozhin emerged in media reports as the group’s alleged owner only in 2016.
What was designed as a deniable tool against Russia’s foreign enemies could be used for the same purposes in domestic politics during the times of crisis - but only in theory.
Another theory striving to explain last week’s drama suggests that the whole affair was a cover-up for Wagner Group’s redeployment and a subsequent offensive where Ukraine is least expecting it, say from Belarus.
This theory is just as flattering to Putin as it is implausible. The Russian leader suffered enormous reputational damage at home and abroad. That’s on top of significant human and material losses, what with the downed aircraft and damaged highways.
Naturally, Putin’s misery is a source of joy for many in the West who are hopeful that it is only a prelude for a much bigger crisis ahead. But civil war in a nuclear superpower is a game of Russian roulette for entire humanity. It either ends well or it ends most life forms on this planet.