The New York Times had an opinion piece on January 26, 2023 by Mikhail Zygar, identified as “a Russian journalist and the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin.””
It’s a fascinating read. Updates from Ukraine make frequent mention of the Wagner Mercenaries and their horrific record, but the larger story of Prigozhin is one that deserves more attention. The link above should allow passage through the NY Times paywall. Zygar gives the back story of Prigozhin and lays out a case for his possibly being able to challenge Putin’s grip on power.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia, it seems, has finally noticed that the war in Ukraine created a dangerous competitor to his power: Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company, the Wagner group, whose troops fight alongside the Russian Army.
Depending on your point of view, Mr. Prigozhin could be considered either the person of the year or the villain of the year. Mr. Putin is, according to many sources in Moscow, confident that he can weaken Mr. Prigozhin, who has clashed with the military’s general staff. However, the effect could be the opposite, with more people seeing Mr. Prigozhin as the most probable favorite to succeed Mr. Putin.
From the very beginning of the war against Ukraine, Mr. Putin made sure that rivals to his power could not emerge and took great pains to ensure that the conflict does not create a popular military leader who could pose a threat. It worked. In the summer of 2022, for instance, the ambitious Gen. Alexander Lapin was the recipient of a small online public relations campaign glorifying him. This immediately cost him his job — and a brief but powerful media war against him was launched by Mr. Prigozhin, who controls a series of online troll factories.
Prigozhin is more than just the man running the Wagner mercenary group. He’s managed to wangle himself an industrial base as supplier of school meals for children all across Russia (Why he’s known as “Putin’s Chef”), founded the troll farms that have been key in spreading disinformation and other forms of information warfare, and earned himself mention in the Mueller Report for his efforts to swing the 2016 presidential election in the U.S.
Putin’s use of him to counter his generals has created something of an unintended consequence.
Mr. Prigozhin’s meteoric political rise began this summer when he started touring Russian prisons and recruiting prisoners for his private Wagner army, offering pardons to those who fight on the front lines in Ukraine: six months of service and then freedom.
To do this, Mr. Prigozhin had to take on several key Russian security agencies at once: the Federal Penitentiary Service, a state within a state in Russia, the F.S.B., the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee. All of those groups have a special status, they report only to President Putin, and no one dares to argue with them. But then the situation changed — a joker appeared, who can beat all the aces at the same time. If Mr. Prigozhin can free any prisoner, his powers are unlimited.
Prigozhin has managed to achieve an image as one of the few successful military leaders in the Ukraine war. Putin has moved to put a couple of powerful generals in charge on the military side as a counter to him now that he is aware that Prigozhin may be become a threat to his own power. (It’s not just failures on the battlefield in Ukraine that keep getting generals replaced — it’s also the political games back in Moscow.)
The risk for Putin is that if his generals fail to succeed in crushing Ukraine, he ends up owning their failure. That makes him vulnerable to Prigozhin, and it’s a dimension to the conflict that complicates any kind of resolution. It’s not merely ambition driving Putin in the light of this — it may now have become a question of his own survival.
Whether or not Prigozhin replacing Putin would be an improvement is not really a question. The answer is already clear. The South China Morning Post has reported that he responded to the latest imposition of sanctions against him by asking why?
...White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday that Wagner, which has been supporting Russian forces in their invasion of Ukraine and claiming credit for battlefield advances, would be designated a significant transnational criminal organisation.
A letter in English addressed to Kirby and posted on the Telegram channel of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s press service read: “Dear Mr Kirby, Could you please clarify what crime was committed by PMC Wagner?”
Kirby called Wagner “a criminal organisation that is committing widespread atrocities and human rights abuses”.
emphasis added
It’s their business model. As Zygar reports in the NY Times, their reputation for cruelty actually plays well in Russia.
Last fall, Yevgeny Nuzhin, a former Russian prisoner who defected to Ukraine after being recruited by the Wagner group and ended up back in Russia after a prisoner swap, was killed with a sledgehammer. A video of this massacre emerged in November and was most likely intended as a warning to all future deserters.
Surprisingly, this barbarity has a lot of fans. Stores in Russia began to sell “Wagner Sledgehammers,” as well as souvenirs and car stickers with Wagner symbols. Mr. Prigozhin, who put out a statement supporting Mr. Nuzhin’s killing, became somewhat of a folk hero.
A web search for “Wagner atrocities” turns up reports from everywhere they have been operating, not just in Ukraine. SCMP reports that moves by the U.S. to sanction the Wagner Group are just the latest in sanctions on Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries.
The European Union imposed its own sanctions in December 2021 on Wagner, which has been active in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mozambique and Mali, as well as Ukraine.
Prigozhin has described Wagner as a fully independent force with its own aircraft, tanks, rockets and artillery.
He is wanted in the United States for interference in US elections, something that he said in November he had done and would continue to do.
emphasis added
It’s not stated if Prigozhin shares Putin’s beliefs about a “Greater Russia”, but it’s not likely he’d be an improvement if he displaced him.
A January 26 statement from the U.S. Treasury Department has more on the latest round of sanctions.
Sanctions Target Wagner’s Global Support Network, Russia’s Military Complex, Putin Cronies
WASHINGTON — Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is taking additional actions to degrade the Russian Federation’s capacity to wage war against Ukraine by sanctioning eight individuals and 16 entities, and four aircraft. Today’s action, concurrent with additional sanctions actions by the Department of State, targets the infrastructure that supports battlefield operations in Ukraine, including producers of Russia’s weapons and those administering Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. Notably, today’s actions include the designation of persons that support Russian defense-related entities.
“As sanctions and export controls on Russia from our international coalition continue to bite, the Kremlin is desperately searching for arms and support – including through the brutal Wagner Group – to continue its unjust war against Ukraine,” said Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen. “Today’s expanded sanctions on Wagner, as well as new sanctions on their associates and other companies enabling the Russian military complex, will further impede Putin’s ability to arm and equip his war machine.”
Read the whole statement from the Treasury — it gives a broader picture of just how far the efforts to contain Russia are reaching, and why it matters.
(For related reading, here’s a recent post on the mindset of tankies regarding Ukraine, and why there are serious questions about the FBI and Russian interference in 2016 and beyond.)