As Russia’s terrible conflict in Ukraine continues, another outburst by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the flamboyant leader of the paramilitary Wagner group, has exposed the power struggle in Russia’s military leadership. Prigozhin questioned the military’s ability to defend Russian territory last week, calling Russian commanders “stupid” and liable for “criminal orders.”
Prigozhin had also recorded himself next to the bodies of Wagner fighters, launching a diatribe at Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and its chief of general staff, Valery Gerasimov.
“Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where are the fucking shells?” Prigozhin demanded.
“Look at them! Look at them!” he fumed, gesturing at the corpses. “You sit in expensive clubs […] your children make YouTube videos […] they [Wagner fighters] died so you could gorge yourselves in your offices!”
Surprisingly, Prigozhin indirectly targeted Russian President Vladimir Putin personally, referring to the “happy grandfather” who thought the war in Ukraine was going well.
“But what”, Prigozhin speculated, “if it turns out that this grandfather is a complete asshole?” (Some translations have used a different expletive.)
Infighting in the open
Wagner’s feud with Russia’s military has devolved into a soap opera played out in front of a global audience. In the most recent incident, a Washington Post piece published this week claimed Prigozhin had contact with Ukrainian military intelligence on many occasions.
According to the story, Prigozhin promised to send over intelligence regarding Russian forces’ positions in exchange for the Ukrainian military withdrawing from Bakhmut, where Wagner fighters have been fighting Ukrainian forces for months.
However, the use of compromising material and misinformation is a frequent strategy throughout Eurasia. And, while rivalries between Russia’s contending elites frequently erupt, Putin has previously had little trouble reining them in.
However, the fact that Putin now appears unable (or unwilling) to do so with Prigozhin suggests that his ability to oversee the Kremlin’s fiefdoms is no longer what it once was. A weakened Putin, who has purposefully placed himself at the center of the Russian state with no obvious successor, would raise more severe concerns about the regime’s future.
Authoritarian governments exert control over their people in a variety of ways. They frequently employ fear – of the state as well as foreign and internal “enemies” – against which only strong leadership can prevail.
They also require success narratives, based on triumphs over foreign or internal foes. Putin’s Russia has been no exception, stretching credibility time and again to declare huge victories over Russia’s woke Western adversaries.
When things go wrong, it becomes necessary to punish scapegoats to deflect blame away from the leader. This is what we are seeing now, with Russia’s armed forces and Wagner attempting to blame each other.
However, failure, like a triumph, has its momentum. That is evident in the fact that the onerous work of reviving Russia’s military fortunes is quickly being overshadowed by a zealous hunt for the guilty.
Who will come out on top in the blame game?
Whichever faction is successful in avoiding “official” criticism is determined by how influential they are in Russia’s complicated vertical power structure, as well as how valuable their key figures are to Putin.
Because the Kremlin clans and their leaders are so fluid and opaque, determining their relative weight is challenging. However, it is widely acknowledged that Prigozhin is an outsider. In Moscow, he lacks a strong power base, and he has few fans among the principal courtiers – the heads of Security Council ministries and agencies.
Wagner is dwarfed by Russia’s conventional armed forces as well as the Rosgvardiya (Putin’s personal guard), which has over 300,000 personnel. That would appear to make it difficult for Prigozhin to avoid the Kremlin’s wrath, let alone directly challenge Putin himself, as some have theorized.
Nonetheless, Wagner and Prigozhin remain crucial to Putin. Despite his purported zeal for eliminating his subordinates, Putin has only seldom fired individuals close to him.
Prigozhin’s friendship with Putin began in the early 2000s when his company Concord Catering became the Kremlin’s preferred partner for state banquets. Prigozhin later founded the Internet Research Agency, the infamous troll factory created to spread Russian misinformation and intervene in elections, particularly following Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution in 2014.
Private military company Wagner expands in Global South, tied to Russia
In 2014, Prigozhin founded the Wagner private military firm with neo-Nazi Dmitry Utkin, a former commander in Russia’s military intelligence special forces. It was essentially indistinguishable from a Russian state organ from the start. Its warriors received training at Russian Defense Ministry locations, its best troops were veterans of the Russian armed forces, and it operated under an honor code centered on supporting Russian interests everywhere.
Wagner had made a name for itself in the Global South by 2022, supplying security, military training, and political propaganda in exchange for large contracts in energy infrastructure, minerals, and precious metals. Wagner’s influence has expanded since the invasion of Ukraine. It is presently present in Syria, Sudan, Central African Republic, Libya, Mozambique, Mali, Cameroon, and Madagascar, among other places.
Prigozhin has demonstrated an eagerness to glorify violence, mirroring the vicious martial culture Putin has fostered in Russia. This was evidenced by his approval of a violent video of a Wagner deserter being executed with a sledgehammer in Ukraine. In response to calls for Wagner to be included in Europe’s terrorist list, Prigozhin sent a sledgehammer splattered in fake blood to the European Parliament in November 2022.
Prigozhin, on the other hand, is ultimately beholden to the Russian military, which he relies on to equip Wagner fighters in Ukraine. Putin’s recent nomination of General Sergei Surovikin as the liaison between Wagner and Russia’s armed forces emphasizes this issue – as a military commander, Surovikin can simply postpone or stop supplying him ammunition.
The military can potentially undermine Wagner’s more expensive contracts by limiting his access to new fighters. The military’s leverage appears to have pushed Prigozhin even more vociferous in his criticism of its leadership. It appears that the infighting will continue.
Putin’s Dilemma: The Paradox of Responsibility and Control
Russia’s military escapades pose a perilous predicament for Putin, as he finds it increasingly difficult to distance himself from significant misjudgments. The decision to invade Ukraine rests squarely on Putin’s shoulders, with his orders to Wagner to make headway in Bakhmut. Additionally, he holds responsibility for appointing military leaders overseeing the war effort, evidenced by the numerous generals dismissed since the invasion in February 2022, including the recent shift from Surovikin to Gerasimov in January.
In a manner reminiscent of the Stalinist and Nazi regimes, Russia’s state media has contorted itself to explain away battlefield failures as the product of subordinate incompetence, even as many journalists and military bloggers assert that Putin’s strategic vision has been compromised by military inadequacy.
This raises a paradoxical question: How could such extensive decay exist without Putin’s awareness? And if he was unaware, why was he so disconnected from those tasked with executing his orders? This paradox suggests a scenario where he may be either oblivious or negligent, or perhaps both.
Despite his advantage of retaining considerable power over the population and the elite, Putin’s narrative will lose credibility if he lacks a tale of triumph to peddle. As the security services, engaged in an intense and unbridled rivalry, approach their breaking point, Putin’s scapegoats may dwindle unless his purging efforts face resistance. This situation could unfold sooner rather than later.
Overall, Putin faces a complex dilemma, navigating the fine line between shouldering responsibility for failures and maintaining control over a system riddled with internal strife. If Kremlin goes along with that line, Prigozhin will be in big danger.