| Wagner Group–Russian Ministry of Defence conflict | |
| Partof: | the Russian invasion of Ukraine |
| Date: | 26 December 2022[1] – 23 August 2023 |
| Place: | Russia, Russian-occupied Ukraine |
| Causes: | Disagreements between Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Ministry of Defence |
| Goals: | Removal of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov |
| Side1: | Wagner Group |
| Side2: | Ministry of Defence |
| Leadfigures1: | Yevgeny Prigozhin Dmitry Utkin |
| Leadfigures2: | Sergei Shoigu Valery Gerasimov |
| Fatalities: | 15–31 killed during rebellion |
| Injuries: | Some injured during clashes between Russian Armed Forces and Wagner Group |
| Arrests: | Many of Prigozhin's sympathizers arrested |
The rivalry between the then-head of Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the leadership of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, headed by Sergei Shoigu, in the public sphere began in 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine[2] and ultimately led to the Wagner Group rebellion on the 23rd to 24th of June 2023.
Although the government provided them with increasingly large resources, Wagner had no legal authority. Prigozhin held no official position and was neither appointed nor elected, meaning that he technically had no authority to answer to.[6] Furthermore, Prigozhin gained international recognition and abandoned his previously secluded personal life.[7] He frequently reported news from the front line while wearing military fatigues. Wagner began to be perceived as Prigozhin's private army, operating beyond the boundaries of Russian legislation and the country's military hierarchy. Dissatisfaction arose within the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the General Staff, leading them to make efforts to curtail Prigozhin's growing influence. In early February 2023, Prigozhin announced that Wagner had ceased recruiting prisoners,[8] which the British Defence Ministry interpreted as a government ban on such recruitment. This change was expected to diminish the group's fighting capacity.[9]
Conversely, Prigozhin portrayed himself as a populist figure who confronted the military establishment,[10] repeatedly accusing it of failing to protect national interests. On 1 October 2022, during Ukraine's Kharkiv counteroffensive, which expelled Russia from most of the region, Prigozhin criticized the Russian command, stating that "All these bastards ought to be sent to the front barefoot with just a submachine gun."[11] Due to his increased influence, Prigozhin was among the few who dared to complain about the military commanders to Putin.[12] [13] Prigozhin primarily targeted the MoD, characterizing its officials as corrupt. However, he also criticized other segments of the Russian elite,[14] including the members of Russian parliament and Russian oligarchs, whom he accused of attempting to "steal everything that belongs to the people" during the war.[15] In one of his statements, Prigozhin criticized Russian elite and their children for enjoying a luxurious and carefree life while ordinary people die in the war. Prigozhin drew parallels between this "division in society" and the one preceding the 1917 Russian Revolution, warning of potential uprisings by "soldiers and their loved ones" against such injustice.[16] [17] The Institute for the Study of War noted that Prigozhin's statements increased his influence within the ultranationalist Russian milblogger community.[18]
Following the Russian proclamation of victory in Bakhmut in late May 2023, Wagner began withdrawing from the city, giving way to regular troops.[21] Internal conflicts persisted between Wagner and the military during this transition.[22] [23] Prigozhin claimed that the military made attempts to assault his retreating forces on both 3 June[24] [25] and 5 June,[26] [27] further claiming that the Russian military had laid mines on the route taken by Wagner during their retreat from Bakhmut. On 5 June 2023, Prigozhin released a video through his social media platforms, purporting to depict the apprehended Lt. Colonel Roman Venevitin of Russia's 72nd Brigade, confessing to having ordered his troops to open fire on retreating Wagner forces, purportedly under the influence of alcohol.
The culmination of the Bakhmut battle, where Wagner played a pivotal role, marked the onset of a period of increasing isolation from the establishment. On 6 June 2023, Prigozhin made a public accusation, asserting that influential individuals were actively sabotaging his highly profitable catering enterprise in association with the Russian military. For more than ten years, these catering contracts had served as a source of his wealth and clout. Concurrently, Prigozhin witnessed a surge in popularity, marking a notable shift in his public perception from non-political to political persona.[28]
According to Meduza, on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin developed tense relations with the Russian leadership. According to its sources, Prigozhin was in conflict with both the Russian Defence Ministry and the Presidential Administration. Prigozhin criticized Shoigu for the actions of the Russian army in Syria, saying that the Russian military is operating there with "outdated methods". In turn, Shoigu did not like the provision of food for the Russian army by Prigozhin's companies.[29]
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in 2022–23, there was a sharp rise in the influence of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group. While in 2017–2018, the number of Wagner members was estimated at several thousand, then by January 2023, according to Western intelligence estimates, the number reached 50 thousand.
The growth of the influence of Wagner was due to the failure of the initial plans of the Russian leadership to quickly defeat Ukraine. In the first months of the invasion, the Russian army suffered significant losses, but Russian President Vladimir Putin delayed the announcement of mobilization for a long time. Under such conditions, the Russian authorities began to actively recruit mercenaries to participate in the hostilities. Thus, a large number of heterogeneous Russian silovik forces began to take part in the invasion, apart from the main military branches and the Donbas republics' militias: the National Guard, Kadyrovites, the FSB, and various private military companies. Internal competition began to emerge between these forces.[30]
According to Prigozhin, the Russian leadership approached him on 16 March 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine "did not go according to plan". On 19 March, his mercenaries arrived from Africa and immediately engaged in the Battle of Popasna.[31] During 2022, Wagner received significant resources, including its own aviation and heavy artillery, and the right to recruit Russian prisoners.[32] Wagner functioned as a private army of Yevgeny Prigozhin, acting outside of Russian law and outside the military hierarchy of the Russian Federation. The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation and the Russian General Staff were unhappy with this situation and began to try to limit Prigozhin's growing influence. In turn, he began to publicly criticize the Ministry of Defence in harsh terms, including calling Russian commanders who allowed Russian forces to retreat in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions "bastards".
On 24 October 2022 the Institute for the Study of War wrote that Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner were gaining strength, creating parallel military structures to the Russian Defence Ministry, which posed a threat to Vladimir Putin's power in the future. In the fall of 2022, Prigozhin sarcastically said that he was building the "Wagner line" so that the Russian armed forces, which, according to him, were hiding behind the backs of Wagner, would feel safe.[33]
Yevgeny Prigozhin became well known after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Prior to that, he long denied his ties with the Wagner Group and would sue journalists who claimed otherwise; only in the fall of 2022, he admitted that he was the founder of Wagner.[34] Wagner existed outside of the legal framework of Russia, and back in 2018, the Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said: "De jure we do not have such legal entities as private military companies.[35] Regardless of this, in the course of the war with Ukraine, Wagner started to become a recognized entity. The Russian state media began to mention Wagner more often, billboards began to appear in Russian cities advertising Prigozhin's military company, and members would even come to Russian schools to participate in "Important conversations" classes. By January 2023, in Russia appeared a legal entity "PMC Wagner Center" in the building of the business center of the same name in Saint Petersburg. Prior to that, there was not a single legal entity in Russia, which would have mentioned Wagner in its name.
After a video of Yevgeny Nuzhin's execution with a sledgehammer appeared on the Internet in November 2022, Prigozhin makes the sledgehammer one of the symbols of Wagner.[36] [37] Prigozhin created an image of a military leader who is ready to deal with traitors and refuseniks in the most brutal way. However, according to the Vyorstka Media publication, Prigozhin's reputation among Russian participants in the invasion of Ukraine was ambiguous.[38] Some of the military supported him and even some of them wrote reports on their transfer to Wagner. For example, one of the officers interviewed by journalists said: "I can say for our guys that almost everyone is for him. The guy is serious. Shoigu is an asshole, it's a fact". According to a Russian mobilizer, the support for Prigozhin was due to the incompetence of the commanders of the Russian regular army and the lies of the top officials of the MoD. However, part of the military sharply criticized Prigozhin and the Wagner Group, in particular for the practice of extrajudicial executions. Former Wagner employees told reporters on condition of anonymity that their attitude towards Prigozhin was changed by the publication of the video of the execution of Nuzhin. They became frightened that Wagner had become a "beaten down" organization, and they saw Prigozhin as "crazy", "out of control" and not saving other people's lives.
A source of the iStories publication said:[39]
Prigozhin is a popular theory among the siloviks: He is the sword of Damocles hanging over the elite, and is needed to curb it and maintain an atmosphere of fear. In his opinion, Prigozhin's activity was coordinated with Putin, who, knowing the doubts of the Russian elites about the necessity of war with Ukraine, threatened them with Prigozhin, whose activity is not limited by the law. It has been suggested that Prigozhin's activity was necessary for Putin to "keep defence minister Sergei Shoigu and his subordinates in line".
Another iStories source, close to the MoD, said that Wagner was fully dependent on the supply of ammunition, logistics, medical, and other military infrastructure, without which Prigozhin's army would have quickly become ineffective. However, although Prigozhin was an irritant to many in the FSB and the MoD, Wagner continued to operate at the instigation of the president. Another journalist source from among former security services suggested that the Kremlin was preparing Prigozhin to fill the political niche of the deceased LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and that Prigozhin could also be assigned the role of "supervisor" of war veterans in Ukraine after their return to Russia, so that combat veterans would not create problems for the authorities. According to the iStories interlocutor, none of the "systemic politicians" that existed in Russia were suitable for this role, since combat veterans did not recognize such politicians, while they all knew Prigozhin. At the same time, Putin needed a personally dedicated politician, who Prigozhin looked like. Given a hypothetical negative development of events for the Putin regime, according to the interlocutor of journalists, it was Prigozhin who could be assigned the role of "Putin's guardsman", who would be able to carry out a demonstrative beating of the Russian elite, repression and execution. Many political observers also compared Prigozhin and his PMC to the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible.[40] At the same time, a businessman close to Putin's entourage said that Prigozhin was "more about money than politics", and, according to him, Prigozhin was a member of Putin's inner circle, being personally loyal to the Russian president and "tied to him by blood".
In December 2022, the Wagner Group first sounded out loud accusations against the ministry of defence.[41] Videos circulating on Telegram alleged that Wagner fighters had appealed to the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, because of the problems in providing their units with shells, with fighters calling Gerasimov a "faggot" and a "devil". Prigozhin himself said about this statement at the time: "As for the appeal to Gerasimov, I agree that the wording should be more correct. However, the problems that exist should be dealt with jointly". Then, one of the former Wagner fighters, in an interview with the BBC said: "I think it's a conflict between the Defence Ministry and Prigozhin. And it is escalating." The BBC journalists noted that although various public conflicts between Russian siloviks have occurred repeatedly since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, citing as an example the conflict between Alexander Khodakovsky and Kadyrovites, no one had previously publicly called the Chief of the Russian General Staff a "faggot".
In January 2023, Prigozhin and the MoD had a dispute in absentia over whose merit was the capture of Soledar: The head of Wagner claimed that Soledar was captured only by his fighters, while the MoD did not mention the Wagnerites in its reports on the battle of Soledar for a long time. Then Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that the conflict between Prigozhin and the Russian Ministry of Defence exists only in the information field.
Family members of Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu also became an object of mockery by Yevgeny Prigozhin.[42] On 20 February 2023, in his address to the Ministry of Defence, Prigozhin said, "I am not poking you in the nose with the fact that you sit down to breakfast, lunch and dinner from gold dishes, and send your daughters, granddaughters and dogs on vacation in Dubai. Not embarrassed by anything. At a time when a Russian soldier is dying at the front. I'm just asking – give me ammunition!"[43] In February 2023, Sergei Shoigu's son-in-law Alexei Stolyarov liked Yuri Dud's anti-war post on Instagram.[44] After it gained media attention, Stolyarov even got into a skirmish with one of his critics, calling him a "Z-scum" but Stolyarov soon claimed that he was "not liking anything".[45] Prigozhin stated: "We have to catch Stolyarov and bring him to me. I will train him for six weeks, and since I am a Z-scum myself, I will help him to reform by sending him to combat".
In May 2023, Prigozhin spoke out again about the Shoigu family: "Shoigu's son-in-law walks around shaking his buttocks, meaning his buttocks, and his daughter opens the Kronstadt forts. Did you earn money for these forts?! You spend your money on these forts? Spend it on fucking ammunition. And when the Minister of Defence shakes his little daughter and shakes some motherfucker who's a blogger, and also bends his fingers that he doesn't like the special operation... We didn't come up with this special operation, but we took a visor and said: 'If we went to fuck with our neighbors, we should fuck all the way'."[46] Criticizing the idle lifestyle of the children of the Russian elite, Prigozhin noted: "And it turns out that men are fighting, while some people just like to have fun. How can Shoigu's son-in-law go to the Arab Emirates and shake his "booty"? Obviously, it's a bit gay. It's so fucking gay, but that's okay, it's their family's choice".
In February 2023, the competition between the Ministry of Defence and Wagner began to intensify against the background of the Russian winter offensive, with the only success Russian forces managed to achieve being in the direction of Bakhmut, which was accomplished by Wagner forces at the cost of heavy losses.[47] [48] [49] Since February 2023, Prigozhin began to complain about the "shell hunger" of Wagner during the heavy fighting for Bakhmut.[50] On 16 February, Wagner fighters published a video, where, in an emphatically polite manner, they addressed the Russian Defence Ministry with a request to give them ammunition. Then Prigozhin confirmed that it was his soldiers, and reported that the appeal had some effect. But soon a video surfaced on the Internet, where soldiers with insignia of Wagner fired machine guns at the portraits of General Gerasimov and the Chief of Staff of the Ground Forces Alexander Lapin with the words "Fucking awesome machine gun, fucking generals". Prigozhin called this video a "Ukrainian fake". On 20 February, Prigozhin published a new appeal in which he stated that although there is ammunition in military depots, the MoD deliberately does not issue it to Wagner. On 21 February, the ministry said that despite the "exaggerated statements appearing on certain information resources" about a shortage of ammunition, however, all requests for ammunition are fulfilled for the assault troops in the shortest possible time". On 22 February, Prigozhin published another audio message, where he accused Shoigu and Gerasimov personally of not providing ammunition to Wagner detachments. He said: "The Wagner PMC kind of does not exist. We used to be given ammunition formally for some military units, which like to take Bakhmut instead of us". According to Prigozhin, "the Wagner PMC is walking around like a beggar, from the world by a thread, asking unit commanders to help in some way". Prigozhin then published a photo with the bodies of dead Wagner fighters, saying that, because of the lack of ammunition, his squads are suffering heavy losses. He said: "We're just going to die twice as much until everyone runs out. And when all the Wagnerites run out, then most likely Shoigu and Gerasimov will have to take the machine guns. Prigozhin's media companies launched the #DayShellsToWagners media campaign, which was active all spring 2023.
Military expert Yuri Fedorov noted that Prigozhin "simply uses" the problem of ammunition shortage for his confrontation with the Russian Defense Ministry, since other units of the Russian forces also had a shortage of shells, as former commander of the Vostok battalion Alexander Khodakovsky said in particular.
According to political analyst Abbas Gallyamov, Prigozhin tried to show himself as "the main savior of the Fatherland", which displeased the MoD, while Wagner, according to Gallyamov, was not much more effective than the Russian army—and that, because of his intemperance, Prigozhin began to cause Putin many political problems.
At the end of April, Prigozhin began stating that he was ready to withdraw his forces from Bakhmut. In May 2023, he said: "We have been put on an artificial shortage of ammunition that is in storage. We were receiving no more than 30% of our needs. So our losses were much higher than they should have been, but we were getting ahead. A month ago they stopped giving us ammunition, and we're getting no more than 10%."
On 5 May, Prigozhin published a video in which he shouted with a face distorted with anger against the bodies of the murdered Wagnerites: "Now listen to me, bitches, these are somebody's fathers and somebody's sons. And those scum who don't give ammunition, bitch, will eat their guts in hell. We have a 70% ammunition shortage. Shoigu, Gerasimov, where the fuck is the ammunition? Look at them, bitches."[51] Prigozhin said to the Russian military commanders: "You sit in expensive clubs, your children enjoy life, you make videos on YouTube. You think that you are the masters of this life, and that you have the right to dispose of their lives. In the same video, he stated that on 10 May he would withdraw his forces from Bakhmut to the rear camps to "lick their wounds," since "in the absence of ammunition they are doomed to senseless death".. Prigozhin addressed Gerasimov and Shoigu personally and said: "You will be responsible for tens of thousands of deaths (...). And I will achieve it!"
On 6 May, Prigozhin, in his next address, revealed for the first time publicly that he was banned from recruiting mercenaries among inmates, although information about this appeared as early as February 2023. According to the head of Wagner, the Russian military command took such a step "to compensate for their failures, because of envy". According to Prigozhin, the Russian military department also stopped issuing awards to dead fighters of his PMCs, and did not allow Wagner to use special communications and transport aircraft.
On 7 May, Prigozhin said that he received a military order, which included an order to provide Wagner with everything necessary, and General Sergei Surovikin was to be responsible for interaction with the army and Wagner. However, in his 9 May video message, Prigozhin said that this never happened. Prigozhin accused the Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov of allegedly ordering him to give 10% of the required number of shells. Prigozhin said: "If there is no ammunition, then we will leave the position and ask the question – who is cheating on the motherland after all." In a video published shortly before the start of the Victory Parade in Moscow, he berated the Russian military command and added: "The happy grandpa thinks he's happy. But what is the country to do if suddenly it turns out that grandpa is a complete asshole?"[52] [53] According to Meduza, the Kremlin negatively reacted to Prigozhin's words about "grandpa". "Of course, he can then say that this is about Shoigu or about an abstract layman, but people draw understandable conclusions.[54]
Observers have noted the ambiguity of Wagner Group's reputation. Although Prigozhin tried to position Wagner as an effective military structure, this image has been criticized, including by Russian pro-war bloggers. They noted that up to 80% of the assault teams of Wagner consisted of former prisoners, and that Wagner created results on the battlefield by conducting "meat assaults", during which Wagner suffered heavy losses. According to a number of Russian pro-war bloggers, despite Prigozhin's public criticism of the Russian Defense Ministry, Wagner received ammunition at the expense of other parts of the front, and "shell hunger" was observed in general along the entire battle line, and not only from the Russian side, but also from the Ukrainian side.
On 2 June, Prigozhin announced the withdrawal of Wagner forces from Bakhmut. At the same time, Prigozhin accused representatives of the Russian Ministry of Defense that they had allegedly mined the escape routes of Wagner forces from Bakhmut.[55]
On 5 June, the Prigozhin press service published a video, in which Wagner members interrogated the commander of the Russian 72nd Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Roman Venevitin.[56] Venevitin, with traces of beatings on his face, said on the video that he "in a state of alcoholic intoxication" due to personal animosity fired at a Wagner car. However, according to the documents published on the Prigozhin channel, the incident with the capture of Venevitin occurred as early as 17 May. According to a lawyer interviewed by BBC journalists, "the capture of a lieutenant colonel of the Russian Armed Forces by Wagnerites is an armed kidnapping of a public servant in the line of duty, committed by an organized group". In addition, the actions Wagner fell under a number of related articles, including Article 318, Part 2 of the Criminal Code "threatening to use violence dangerous to life or health," which could result in up to 10 years in prison.. Journalists also noted that back in late May 2023 a video surfaced where Storm-Z fighters accused Venevitin of giving "criminal orders" and complained about death threats from Venevitin. On 8 June Venevitin himself published his own video, in which he claimed that he had been kidnapped, beaten, and threatened with execution. According to him, Wagner members also behaved this way towards other Russian servicemen.[57]
Within a few months, Prigozhin underwent a metamorphosis, beginning to position himself as a "truth teller", ready to speak the unpleasant truth and to criticize the Russian leadership in the harshest terms. In addition to his rhetoric against the Ministry of Defense, Prigozhin also had a conflict with the leadership of the Chechen Republic, and personally with its Head, Ramzan Kadyrov.[58]
By June 2023, Prigozhin was aiming for the image of the "people's hero of the Special Military Operation". In May 2023, according to Russian opinion polls, Prigozhin's approval rating reached 4%, equaling that of Speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin and CPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov. The sociological service Russian Field noted that Prigozhin "is fighting not only on the external front, but also on the internal front, actively earning recognition and a rating. And he converts the former into the latter very well. According to Russian sociologists and political scientists, Prigozhin increased his visibility "through a combination of aggressive marketing and specific achievements," in particular he tried to "sell" the capture of Bakhmut to the public as his personal merit, and since Bakhmut was the only major capture of the Russian army in many months, the public could not ignore such an achievement".
On 27 May 2023, milblogger and former Defense Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, Igor "Strelkov" Girkin accused Prigozhin of conspiring to employ the Wagner Group to orchestrate a coup within Russia. Girkin further claimed that Prigozhin was actively flouting the Russian 2022 war censorship laws by openly criticizing the Russian high command and that his forces were effectively in a state of mutiny.[59] Prigozhin refuted these allegations, asserting that the Wagner Group did not possess a sufficiently large army to execute a coup.[60] By June 2023, Prigozhin had begun making regular statements that were not allowed to any other public figure in Russia. Journalists noted that many of his statements would have resulted in criminal charges against other people. At this time, Prigozhin witnessed a surge in popularity among the Russian populace, particularly among nationalists. In a May survey conducted by the Levada Center, respondents were asked to identify the politicians they trusted the most, and for the first time, Prigozhin emerged as one of the top ten names on the list, marking a notable shift in his public perception from non-political to political persona.
The Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde described Prigozhin's "program" as a radical populist movement. The general principles of such a movement: a rigid division of society into "good people" and "bad elite", a demand (and promise) to save the nation, and authoritarian methods of implementing these slogans.[61] [62]
See main article: Wagner Group rebellion.
On the afternoon of 23 June, Yevgeny Prigozhin released a large interview with harsh accusations against the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense, in which he stated that the Russian Ministry of Defense deliberately deceived the Russian public and Vladimir Putin about the upcoming NATO-backed offensives of the AFU in 2022 and about the increase of "Ukrainian military aggression" before Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Prigozhin said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was ready for negotiations with the Kremlin, but the Russian leadership refused due to its "maximalist positions". Also, Prigozhin accused the oligarchs and the Russian military leadership of launching a full-scale invasion to obtain assets of the occupied Ukrainian territories, higher military ranks, military awards and for "self-promotion".[63]
On 23 June 2023, Prigozhin said that there were missile strikes by the Russian military against Wagner rear camps. In response to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Prigozhin said: "This creature will be stopped". The Russian Defense Ministry said that all the messages and videos spread in social networks on behalf of Prigozhin about the Russian military strikes on the positions of Wagner do not correspond to reality and are an "informational provocation". After that, the FSB opened a criminal case against Yevgeny Prigozhin under Article 279 of the Criminal Code, suspecting him of organizing an armed insurgency.[64]
After the rebellion led by Yevgeny Prigozhin failed, the Wagner Group began withdrawing its forces from Russia and began moving them to Belarus as part of a deal signed with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that ended the rebellion.[65] [66]
See main article: 2023 Wagner Group plane crash. On 23 August, Prigozhin and nine others including fellow founder Dmitry Utkin were killed in a plane crash as his private jet traveled from Moscow to Saint Petersburg.[67] Russian state-owned media agency TASS reported that Prigozhin had been on the passenger list of the flight.[68] A Wagner-associated Telegram channel claimed the jet that Prigozhin was in was shot down by Russian air defenses over Tver Oblast.[69]
The Institute for the Study of War assessed that the crash, which they described as a targeted assassination, would ultimately eliminate the Wagner Group as a substantial threat to Putin.[70]