The Wagner Group: Putin’s embattled mercenaries
“For a former convict”, Yevgeny Prigozhin enjoyed a very “rapid ascent in Russian society”, said Isabel van Brugen in Newsweek (New York). As a young man, he was “reduced to selling hot dogs after serving a prison sentence for robbery and fraud”. But since the early 1990s, he has amassed a vast personal fortune and great political influence: he was dubbed “Putin’s chef” because his catering company provided banquets to the Kremlin. He has long been close to Russia’s president; more recently, he has been a key player in the Ukraine War – as the founder and controller of the infamous Wagner mercenary group. Now, however, Prigozhin’s star is no longer in the ascendant. Wagner units are struggling, as he admitted last week, to take the crucial eastern city of Bakhmut, despite throwing thousands of troops into what is known by both sides as the “meat grinder”. Putin is reportedly irked by Wagner’s slow progress, and by Prigozhin’s public grandstanding: he is a harsh critic of Russia’s military. Wagner units are now being sidelined and replaced with regular troops.
Mercenary organisations are officially banned in Russia, said Kathrin Hetzel on RTL (Cologne). But there’s no doubt that the Wagner Group, whose members call themselves “the musicians” in a nod to the composer, has played a major role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, going back to 2014. His men have been deployed to some of the most dangerous areas of the front line. Last year, Prigozhin was made a Hero of the Russian Federation, the country’s “highest honour”. His units have also been implicated in “horrific” crimes against Ukrainian civilians; and two videos have appeared to show Wagner deserters being executed with a sledgehammer, a tool which has become an unofficial symbol of the group. Many recruits have little to lose, said Anna Pavlova in Meduza (Riga). Some 40,000 out of 50,000 in Ukraine came from Russian jails, offered pardons in exchange for six months’ service. Prigozhin recruited many himself. “Don’t drink too much, don’t take drugs, and don’t rape women,” he advised in a video that found its way online last month. But that reservoir is drying up, as reports reach prisoners of the massive casualty rate – of up to 80% of the inmates recruited from some prisons. Recruits are reportedly thrown into battle without training, in “human wave” death squads designed to flush out enemy soldiers. Now, with fewer inmates willing to risk going to Ukraine, Prigozhin has announced that he will no longer recruit from jails.
The Wagner Group once perfectly fitted the long Russian tradition of maskirovka – “war by disguise or deception”, said Tony Barber in the FT. But Prigozhin’s newfound fame is making a mockery of that secrecy – Wagner’s activities are no longer deniable – and their leader is often said to have grand political ambitions of his own. Some seem to regard Wagner as heroes: one Russian MP encouraged veterans, even ex-convicts, to go into politics. “Truly, the invasion of Ukraine is leading Russian public life into a very dark place.”
Wagner’s influence is still being felt around the world, particularly in Africa, said Lluís Bassets in El País (Madrid). “Where there are failed states, precious minerals, raw materials, and young people with no present or future, there is Wagner.” It has sunk its claws into the Central African Republic, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, and it has played a major role in Syria. There’s no doubting that “Putin needs Prigozhin’s mercenaries” to defend his interests, said Andrea Böhm and Michael Thumann in Die Zeit (Hamburg). But in sections of the Russian military, Prigozhin “is now almost as hated as the real opponent of the war, Ukraine”. Generals are fed up with his stunts (he recently courted yet more publicity by challenging Ukraine’s President Zelensky to a “plane duel over Bakhmut”), and are refusing to help supply the Wagner Group with equipment, or even collect their dead from the battlefield. Putin, of course, won’t mind pitching mercenaries against the military if it helps achieve his aims. But whether his “divide and conquer” tactics will help him win his war remains to be seen.