The Wagner Group and Russia’s new general
“One of the persistent reports about how Wagner swells its ranks is that it conscripts prisoners. Whether or not this is true, it doesn’t change the fact that Wagner fighters need to be extensively trained to wage a war of advanced weaponry”
By George Friedman
Moscow has relieved its current general in Ukraine, placing him under the staff of his successor, Gen. Valery Gerasimov.
In a way, this makes sense – he can help the new commander find his place – but if he works toward Gerasimov’s failure, it could create problems in morale.
The arrangement is odd, but if it works, it works, and Russia is in dire need of something that works.
It’s been nearly a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, and it has yet to claim any semblance of victory. The army has fought battles and has even appeared to have won some, but nothing has been decisive.
A potentially decisive battle is being fought now, but the relief of the theater commander does not indicate that it is going well.
The Russian army clearly was not prepared for Ukrainian resistance, nor for the extent to which the United States was prepared to arm Ukrainian troops. Russian intelligence should have known as much, and thus should have baked this into Moscow’s wartime strategy.
Russia has yet to lose the war, of course, but conflicts such as this one tend to be affairs of attrition, and the war must be costing Russia far more than it expected.
Which at least partly explains the participation of the Wagner Group, the Russian private military contractor that has served Moscow in many other regions – often to brutal effect – but never served in a theater-level operation that is essentially a multidimensional line.
It is not only facing resistance it has not experienced before, but its force has been dramatically increased so that the problems of command are extremely different from lesser wars, the troops less disciplined because of the need to bring in new recruits.
One of the persistent reports about how Wagner swells its ranks is that it conscripts prisoners. Whether or not this is true, it doesn’t change the fact that Wagner fighters need to be extensively trained to wage a war of advanced weaponry.
The battles inherent to Ukraine require seasoned and motivated manpower, and whether that comes from prisoners or seminary students, it will have trouble facing a sophisticated enemy. And however the Ukrainian army began the war, it is indisputably now a trained and motivated fighting force.
Wagner already had questions surrounding its effectiveness, and now it reportedly sports a larger force than the Russian army does. That force, moreover, answers to its own command structure outside the purview of the Russian military.
It’s easy to see, then, that whatever initial success Wagner may bring could succumb to attrition and in time fail to penetrate deep into Ukrainian territory – even if it is able to break through Ukrainian lines.
The logical outcome of the war in Ukraine is a negotiated peace. But Wagner is neither owned nor operated by President Vladimir Putin, so it’s not clear how the political process of negotiations plays out.
I think that if Putin negotiates for trivial gains, he will be politically finished. He must have substantial successes to justify the cost of war.
As for Gerasimov, he may be a superb general, but given the reality, he is going to fight a battle for command over Wagner before he fights the battles for Ukraine. His job is to crash through and surround the enemy and force mass surrender or death.
He faces tough resistance from multiple directions, but if he is successful, he may be able to end the stalemate and force the negotiations I thought would come much sooner.