Schism in the Russian Military

Wagner Group vs. the Ministry of Defense

Image courtesy of Federico Zangarini

There are always dangers when a nation sets portions of its own military at odds with one another, particularly in wartime.  Eventually, vital political favor, control, and resources will be competed for by the various factions; this competition accelerates rapidly when the war begins to go badly.  In my view, that situation reached critical mass in Russia over the weekend.  This was not a coup attempt; it was internecine warfare between Wagner Group mercenaries and the regular Russian military.

The Background:

There are three primary players in this drama.  Wagner Group PMC, headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, is widely regarded as Vladimir Putin’s private army.  They have an extensive track record operating as both mercenaries and deniable force for the Russian government in the developing world, particularly Africa and the Middle East.  Since the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian War they have been deployed as effective shock troops against Ukrainian forces, often outperforming regular Russian units, though at a significant cost in casualties.  Wagner is not under the control of the Ministry of Defense (MoD).

Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov serve as the Russian Minister of Defense and Chief of the General Staff respectively.  Both have been in their positions since November of 2012 and together they effectively control the Russian armed forces under the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.  The effectiveness of the Russian military, or lack thereof, is the responsibility of both men.  Both are known to detest Prigozhin and his Wagner Group, who reciprocates the sentiment.

Lastly we have Vladimir Putin, President of Russia since 2012 and the architect of the dysfunctional status quo that exploded over the weekend.  He has helped and supported Prigozhin since Wagner’s formation in 2014 and allowed them to operate in defiance of Russian law prohibiting private military organizations.  In return they have operated deniably on behalf of the Russian government around the globe.  However, the pressures of the Russo-Ukrainian War changed this dynamic.

Large scale conventional war in Ukraine has required Wagner to operate openly and in conjunction with the Russian armed forces in Russia and Ukraine. Wagner depends on the Russian MoD for resupply and has used Russian military facilities for both basing and training.  Heavy casualties within the mercenary outfit have also prompted recruitment from Russian prisons in exchange for commuting sentences.  All of this saps resources from the Russian MoD that it desperately needs to supply and maintain its own battered formations.

However this is not the only problem for Shoigu and Gerasimov.  Prigozhin’s surviving Wagner Group veterans have come to be regarded as generally better soldiers than the average Russian MoD formation.  Wagner has routinely been deployed to hot spots, both offensively and defensively, as a kind of fire brigade formation to stabilize a situation or carry a difficult attack through.  The stigma of this trend is a major embarrassment for the professional Russian military - none more so than for the two men responsible for training and leading the Russian soldiery.  To make matters worse Prigozhin has vocally and repeatedly characterized Shoigu in particular as incompetent and corrupt.  Prigozhin alleges that senior figures within the MoD have catastrophically mismanaged the war and turned what should have been a Russian victory into a debacle.  It was only a matter of time until this internal drain on resources and affront to professional Russian military ego provoked a response.

The Russian MoD’s response was to promulgate an order, later supported by President Putin, to require all non-MoD forces currently operating in conjunction with Russian regulars to sign contracts with the MoD.  The obvious intent of this was to subordinate the obstreperous Prigozhin and his Wagner Group to the regular Russian military where they could be more closely, and officially, controlled.  Insinuations were subsequently made by the Russian government that the long-standing Russian law prohibiting mercenaries on its soil might be invoked to compel compliance.  While some, including Ramzan Kadyrov and his Chechens, complied, Prigozhin refused.

The Events of 23-24 June:

On the night of 23-24 June, in the wake of what Prigozhin alleges was a Russian military artillery attack on a Wagner base camp, Wagner forces numbering perhaps 5-8,000 crossed the border into Russia from occupied Ukraine.  By the early morning of 24 June, after a brief standoff and minimal resistance from Russian military personnel and Rosgvardiya (Russian National Guard) troops, the city of Rostov had effectively been secured by Wagner units.  Rostov is the site of the Russian Southern Military District Headquarters and command center for the Russian war effort in Ukraine.  Minimal force was used by Wagner, as far as is currently known, and Prigozhin promised nothing would be done to interrupt the prosecution of the war in Ukraine.  Whether this last promise was in fact carried out is uncertain.

Prigozhin captured several senior Russian officers during his seizure of the city, though he alleged Shoigu and Gerasimov both fled from the city before they could be taken into custody.  Prigozhin then articulated his reasoning and motives for the attack via video and Wagner affiliated telegram channels.  In essence it seems to have been a recapitulation of long standing complaints against the senior figures in the Russian MoD, coupled with a demand that Shoigu and Gerasimov be turned over to Wagner and/or arrested for incompetence, corruption, mismanagement of the war, etc. or Wagner would march on Moscow.

The rhetoric used in these official and unofficial statements from Prigozhin bears special mention.  It can best be described as military populism.  Prigozhin consistently styled his actions as standing up to corrupt bureaucrats in defense of the Russian state, and especially on behalf of the common Russian soldier who had been abused, neglected, and sent into the meat grinder of war by a pack of incompetents.  He repeatedly exculpated Putin from responsibility, saying senior members of the MoD had systematically lied to and withheld information from the head of the Russian state.  Information he was now prepared to release – especially casualty figures.

President Putin’s response came at just after 9am local time and was unlikely to be what Prigozhin expected.  Putin characterized the actions by Wagner as armed rebellion, he called it mutiny and treason.  Putin promised that the Russian military had been authorized to neutralize these rebel elements and implored all Russians to come together to defeat this internal threat.  Internal unrest, he said, was a mortal threat to Russia, characterizing it as a stab in the back.  He invoked the specter of the 1917 Revolution when communists brought down the Tsarist Empire in the midst of World War I and eventually forced the Russians to sign the humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Imperial Germany.  The rhetoric was a hardline, uncompromising rejection of Wagner demands.  Wagner’s response was to begin moving on Moscow in earnest. 

Russian MoD seems to have panicked once this became apparent.  Little coordinated opposition occurred, apart from scattered airstrikes, while highways were dug up to attempt to slow the advance and makeshift trenches and fighting positions were constructed outside Moscow.  Likely for the first time since the Second World War.  Persistent reports indicate Putin departed to St. Petersburg sometime after delivering his address to the nation that morning.

The exact composition and disposition of the Moscow garrison at the time of Wagner’s approach is unknown.  They were likely an ad hoc collection of various military, FSB, and national guard units.  Compared to Wagner’s armored column it is reasonable to assume these forces would have been significantly overmatched in firepower.  Nor is their reliability certain.  In the end, neither aspect of this makeshift force was tested.

Late in the evening of June 24^th, reputedly in response to a deal struck between Putin and Prigozhin, Wagner forces halted their march and returned to Rostov.  They subsequently evacuated Rostov.  Currently their final disposition is an open question.

It is likely some supply depots were raided by Wagner in and around Rostov, and some number of Russian government personnel do seem to have joined their ranks.  However, it does not appear the defections occurred in significant numbers.  Russian ground opposition throughout the operation seems to have been minor at best, with most rear area units refusing to take sides and fight either way.  Some Russian air assets did actively oppose the Wagner units by conducting several air strikes on their columns.  It is likely the Russians lost five helicopters destroyed and 1 damaged, in addition to the destruction of an Il-22M airborne command post aircraft, to Wagner air defense assets.

My Assessment:

This was a high risk mutiny by Wagner, against the MoD, and it failed. 

If we try to put ourselves into the mind of Prigozhin, it even makes a desperate kind of sense.  Wagner is one of the most effective components in the current Russian order of battle.  However, it suffers on the battlefield under the direction of incompetent “professionals” within the MoD who desperately wish to gain complete control over these private soldiers.  The MoD succeeds in garnering Putin’s support for a scheme that will force Wagner to sign a formal contract with the Russian government, essentially placing it under the command of the likes of Shoigu and Gerasimov.  This spells the end for Wagner as an independent force and a massive blow to Prigozhin’s personal standing within the Russian power structure.

Unsurprisingly, Prigozhin was unwilling to docilely accept this state of affairs.  In my opinion, Prigozhin wished to secure the nerve center of the current war effort in the hopes of capturing his nemeses Shoigu and Gerasimov.  Once in his custody, he could release evidence of their incompetence, malfeasance, and deception of Putin.  He likely believed he could garner significant defections from the regular Russian forces if he framed the action as championing the common soldier against uncaring ad corrupt military bureaucrats mismanaging the war.  Had all these elements come together, it might even have worked.

The spectacle of two scapegoats for the war’s failure arrested by Putin’s private army to the cheers of the regular military probably seemed a plausible backdrop for Prigozhin to request a return to the status quo and new leadership at the MoD.  Had Putin gone along with it, it could even have been couched as Prigozhin acting under his orders to preserve the reputation of the Russian President.  Unfortunately for Prigozhin, things did not go as planned.

Once he failed to secure Shoigu and Gerasimov at Rostov, Prigozhin paused, likely hoping significant military defections could still salvage the larger plan.  Shoigu and Gerasimov could still be taken into custody, blamed for wartime failures, and removed from their posts.  When large scale defections failed to materialize and Putin delivered a response that left no doubt that he was not prepared to countersign Prigozhin’s bid for power, the goal became survival.  This, I think, explains the move towards Moscow.

Prigozhin was likely familiar with the critical lack of Russian combat power inside Russia.  He would have known that there were few units capable of opposing a determined drive on Moscow by his battle hardened mercenaries, even if these units had the will to try.  Moreover the spectacle of Putin’s private army turning on him and seizing Moscow (or even assaulting it), would have been critically damaging to Putin’s power base within Russia.  Putin would therefore be compelled to prevent this at all costs, even if it meant doing a deal with Prigozhin.  This gamble, at least in the short term, appears to have worked.

We do not know the details of the deal struck between Putin and Prigozhin.  Currently they are being reported as follows:

1.       Prigozhin and all Wagner mercenaries who participated in this revolt will be pardoned and sent to Belarus.

2.       Wagner Group mercenaries who did not participate in the incident will be required to sign contracts with the MoD or effectively disband.  They will be folded into the regular army.

3.       There will be some level of command change within the MoD.

These details are speculative and even if they prove true, whether Putin will adhere to them in the long term is doubtful.  In the short term, however, they do seem to have diffused the situation for the moment.

This entire incident remains murky to outside observers and difficult to accurately assess. Whatever the truth of events, its repercussions will likely be felt within Russia for some time to come. While I do not think this is the death knell for the Putin regime, it certainly has weakened it. I would expect to see significant changes to the Russian security apparatus in the near future as a bare minimum response.

Author’s Note:  The paucity of confirmable information on this incident renders accurate analysis somewhat difficult.  I have tried to formulate what I believe to be the best plausible explanation for the available facts as they are currently known, given the personalities involved.