Armed Wagner fighters roam Voronezh in southern Russia eating shawarmas. Yevgeny Prigozhin is back to ranting against the defence ministry — while treason charges against the warlord have been revived. Two days after the Kremlin struck a deal to end Wagner’s armed uprising, the truce is teetering on the edge, with growing questions in Russia over whether the bargain will hold. The Kremlin has seized billions of roubles in cash and gold bars from Prigozhin, squeezing Wagner’s finances. But some fervent loyalists of president Vladimir Putin are proposing even more unforgiving solutions. “I am fiercely convinced that in wartime, traitors must be shot,” said Andrei Gurulyov, a prominent pro-war MP, on state television on Sunday. “Whatever fairy tales they tell you, the only way out for Prigozhin is a bullet in the head.”

The first indication of the deal’s fragility came on Monday, when state newswires cited sources saying that — contrary to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s promises — Prigozhin was still under investigation for organising the mutiny. The leak suggested that Russia wanted to maintain pressure on Prigozhin, who resurfaced hours later in a voice message and claimed his mutiny had been a simple act of self-preservation. The insurrection was to stop Wagner being dismantled on July 1, he said, and contrary to reports, his fighters would not be joining the regular armed forces. “The situation has not been resolved as far as I can tell. And the terms that Peskov announced are not sustainable terms,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Nor has Wagner’s activity in Russia fully subsided, despite promises that it would return to base camps in Ukraine. On Sunday evening, locals in Voronezh saw Wagner fighters shopping in a supermarket, even though officials had said they left the city that morning. As the Wagner fighters left, shawarmas in hand from a nearby stand, one “young guy had a rapturous, impudent look. As if everything was fine and nothing really happened, and they’re all going home,” said Vladimir, a teacher in Voronezh. Several Wagner hotlines across Russia, reached by phone on Monday, told the Financial Times they were still recruiting new fighters. “Recruitment is ongoing,” one of them said. “Nobody has put a stop to the recruitment.” A group of Wagner fighters returning to base on Saturday

A group of Wagner fighters returning to base on Saturday © Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

The first big issue is whether Prigozhin — who has yet to confirm his whereabouts — will indeed go into exile in Belarus, as the Kremlin suggested. One person who has known the warlord since the early 1990s, when Putin visited a restaurant Prigozhin owned, said Belarus was probably a jump-off point for him to return to running Wagner’s longstanding mercenary activities in Africa. “Alexander Grigorevich [Lukashenko, the Belarus president] doesn’t need him there under any circumstances . . . and doesn’t have the kind of money to keep him there,” the person said. Instead, Prigozhin “will keep going [all the way to] Africa”.

The coup attempt, however, calls into question what influence Prigozhin can retain over Wagner’s operations from exile. Though nominally independent, Wagner’s mercenary operations in Africa were partly funded and equipped by the Russian government, which used the group as a convenient pretext to deny its official involvement in conflicts there. “It’s a synergistic relationship, because Wagner can’t operate without that kind of support,” Lee said. “It’s allowed to make money on its own, but it has to basically be furthering Russian foreign policy. So would they be OK with him no longer being subordinate to Putin?” Wagner’s finances are an important component of its involvement in the Ukraine invasion — so much so that they appear to have been a big trigger for the revolt.

Road to Moscow On Saturday, as Wagner’s forces marched towards Moscow, Russian investigators seized Rbs4bn ($47mn) in cash, stuffed in cardboard boxes inside a minivan, during a raid on a Prigozhin-owned hotel in St Petersburg. Prigozhin said the haul — which also included three false passports, 5kg in gold bars, six pistols and five bricks of an unspecified white powder, according to local site Fontanka — was only one of three buses filled with cash, which he claimed were used to finance Wagner’s operations and pay fighters’ widows, as well as settle “other issues” he did not specify. “When we were working in Africa, and in Ukraine, and other countries, when we were giving America nightmares [through a Prigozhin-owned troll farm] then everyone was fine with cash,” the warlord said on Saturday. The cash payments were at the heart of Prigozhin’s grievances with defence minister Sergei Shoigu, whose decree this month ordering Wagner to sign contracts with the army appears to have prompted the rebellion, according to people familiar with the matter. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a one-time Wagner ally who has recently dropped his criticism of Shoigu, said he had urged Prigozhin “to leave his business ambitions and not mix them up with matters of state importance”. The Russian MP Gurulyov, a former lieutenant-general, said he had commanded some of Wagner’s early operations almost a decade ago himself but fell out with the group after a Prigozhin-related company lost a Rbs8.5bn state contract.

Wagner’s complex financial and logistical ties with the security apparatus also raised suspicions that Prigozhin’s plot ran deeper. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. The inter-elite, inter-agency fight for a place in Putinism without Putin, for power in postwar Russia, is getting fiercer,” said Pavel Luzin, a visiting scholar at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The ease with which Wagner marched across Russia with just a few thousand men suggested Prigozhin’s allies in the security services could have been involved in the uprising, Luzin added. Russian police block entry to a Wagner building in St Petersburg on Saturday Russian police block entry to a Wagner building in St Petersburg on Saturday © Anatoly Maltsev/EPA/Shutterstock

“If the security forces were waiting for an order that never came, what was the air force doing up there? There are so many strange moments that create the sense that the secret services thought they had the situation under control, and they didn’t,” he said.

The future of Wagner fighters remains uncertain. The Kremlin forgave them and said those who had not taken part would sign contracts with the army. According to an intelligence assessment shared between EU officials and seen by the FT, that number could amount to about 20,000 of Wagner’s 25,000-strong force. But on Monday, Prigozhin said his men would remain independent. “We were marching to demonstrate our protest, not to unseat the government,” he said. Andrei Kartapolov, a former general who is head of the Russian parliament’s defence committee, said Monday he was drafting a bill to formalise Wagner’s status.

“They didn’t offend anyone, they didn’t break anything. Nobody has even the slightest issue with them at all,” Kartapolov told Russian newspaper Vedomosti.

The mutiny, however, has spurred calls to bring Wagner more firmly under the state’s control. Even as Putin praised Wagner for its heroism on the battlefield, the group technically remained illegal in Russia, a loophole that gave the Kremlin more room for manoeuvre. “This uprising might have changed that calculus,” wrote Emily Ferris, a research fellow at UK defence think-tank Rusi, in a note. “Those who sided with Prigozhin will be fired and serious attempts will be made within Russia to quash any sentiment expressing sympathy with Wagner or its views about the management of the war, all of which points to an increasing atmosphere of domestic repression.”

‘A huge humiliation’: failed Russian putsch exposes deep flaws in Putin’s regime Montage of Yevgeny Prigozhin and Vladimir Putin Already on Monday, senior lawmakers said Wagner would be banned from recruiting from prisons — depriving it for good of the convict army that was once one of its major power bases. Others went further still, such as Gurulyov, who said that Wagner fighters who did not join up with the defence ministry should be kicked off the battlefield. Under a similar plan, the defence ministry could continue running Wagner under the same brand while appropriating it for its own ends, the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Lee said. How much of the original Wagner remained would depend on how many senior commanders were kept on, he added. “Those guys have more combat experience than almost anyone in the Russian military. They fought in most of the key battles and they know how to do assaults better than basically anyone in the Russian military,” Lee said. “If those guys leave, it won’t be the same.” Additional reporting by Anastasia Stognei in Riga

  • Briongloid@aussie.zoneEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Armed Wagner fighters roam Voronezh in southern Russia eating shawarmas. Yevgeny Prigozhin is back to ranting against the defence ministry — while treason charges against the warlord have been revived.

    Two days after the Kremlin struck a deal to end Wagner’s armed uprising, the truce is teetering on the edge, with growing questions in Russia over whether the bargain will hold. The Kremlin has seized billions of roubles in cash and gold bars from Prigozhin, squeezing Wagner’s finances. But some fervent loyalists of president Vladimir Putin are proposing even more unforgiving solutions.

    “I am fiercely convinced that in wartime, traitors must be shot,” said Andrei Gurulyov, a prominent pro-war MP, on state television on Sunday. “Whatever fairy tales they tell you, the only way out for Prigozhin is a bullet in the head.” The first indication of the deal’s fragility came on Monday, when state newswires cited sources saying that — contrary to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s promises — Prigozhin was still under investigation for organising the mutiny.

    The leak suggested that Russia wanted to maintain pressure on Prigozhin, who resurfaced hours later in a voice message and claimed his mutiny had been a simple act of self-preservation. The insurrection was to stop Wagner being dismantled on July 1, he said, and contrary to reports, his fighters would not be joining the regular armed forces.

    “The situation has not been resolved as far as I can tell. And the terms that Peskov announced are not sustainable terms,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Nor has Wagner’s activity in Russia fully subsided, despite promises that it would return to base camps in Ukraine.

    On Sunday evening, locals in Voronezh saw Wagner fighters shopping in a supermarket, even though officials had said they left the city that morning. As the Wagner fighters left, shawarmas in hand from a nearby stand, one “young guy had a rapturous, impudent look. As if everything was fine and nothing really happened, and they’re all going home,” said Vladimir, a teacher in Voronezh.

    Several Wagner hotlines across Russia, reached by phone on Monday, told the Financial Times they were still recruiting new fighters. “Recruitment is ongoing,” one of them said. “Nobody has put a stop to the recruitment.” The first big issue is whether Prigozhin — who has yet to confirm his whereabouts — will indeed go into exile in Belarus, as the Kremlin suggested.

    One person who has known the warlord since the early 1990s, when Putin visited a restaurant Prigozhin owned, said Belarus was probably a jump-off point for him to return to running Wagner’s longstanding mercenary activities in Africa. “Alexander Grigorevich [Lukashenko, the Belarus president] doesn’t need him there under any circumstances . . . and doesn’t have the kind of money to keep him there,” the person said. Instead, Prigozhin “will keep going [all the way to] Africa”.

    The coup attempt, however, calls into question what influence Prigozhin can retain over Wagner’s operations from exile. Though nominally independent, Wagner’s mercenary operations in Africa were partly funded and equipped by the Russian government, which used the group as a convenient pretext to deny its official involvement in conflicts there.

    “It’s a synergistic relationship, because Wagner can’t operate without that kind of support,” Lee said. “It’s allowed to make money on its own, but it has to basically be furthering Russian foreign policy. So would they be OK with him no longer being subordinate to Putin?” Wagner’s finances are an important component of its involvement in the Ukraine invasion — so much so that they appear to have been a big trigger for the revolt.