Debris from a mutiny that gripped the world for a little over 24 hours has neither settled in Russia nor in the minds of Russia watchers. Even though a “compromise” has been reached by alleged mediation from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Kremlin’s closest brush with stunde null since the Soviet Union collapsed has triggered more questions than the ones the compromise sought to settle.
The latest spat between Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner Group and the country’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has transported public memory back to the winter of 2014. Radio Free Europe published an article on how, in chilling winters, insignia-less men in green uniforms emerged in Crimea. In no time did they raise the Russian flag over the Crimean parliament and, days later, captured the Simferopol Airport. The little green men masqueraded as the ‘real’ liberators even when the Russian Army had military bases in Crimea under a 1997 treaty with Ukraine.
Despite an impressive array of military victories in 2014, Russia’s ruling elite denied any links between Wagner and the Russian Army. However, a year later, the military company was praised by President Vladimir Putin, when he publicly accepted having ordered the army to deploy those Special Forces.
Deny first, endorse later
The persona of these little green masqueraders’, i.e. the Wagner mercenaries’, dabbled in notorious mystique as their influence, activity and fortunes, especially that of their leader – the former convict and Putin loyalist Yevgeny Prigozhin’s – kept rising under Russian special operations in war-torn Africa and Syria.
The “denial first – endorsement later” paradox has continued. Retracting his 2022 position of denial just days after the armed mutiny, Putin publicly accepted MoD providing for the maintenance of Wagner.
Over the last decade, PMC Wagner has kept operating within the grey zone as a shadow instrument of State policy, giving the Russian Army a perfect alibi to invoke deniability with anything it doesn’t wish to get identified with. Clearly, the proliferation of officially sanctioned but illegally existing military groups has more to do with the dynamics of Russian domestic politics than the conduct of the war itself. This unnerving facet of a modern State stems from the absence of independent institutions as guarantors of the rule of law and State legitimacy. The quest for an equilibrium of convergence among competing power centres – the president, Ministry of Defence, secret services, special forces, private military companies, and powerful oligarchs – and the different permutations of jealousy and rivalry among them, have landed Russia where it is today.
Ostensibly, most of these private armies have been established on specific instructions from the Kremlin. During Russia’s feudal era, the Tsar’s vassals were obliged to assemble and equip armies for the empire’s wars of conquest. Bewildering analogies can be drawn between the Middle Ages and the 21st century. Incidentally, Redoubt, the private army of Gennady Timchenko, Putin’s alleged financier and founder of the Swiss-based oil trading Gunvor Group, has been accused of serious war crimes in Ukraine.
But the story with Wagner has taken a different complexity.
Instead of emerging in complementarity to the MoD as faithful assistants and keepers of the State-narrative, Wagner’s’ international successes and rising influence with Putin and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) have pitted it against the country’s MoD, especially the defence minister Sergei Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. Details of their public spat are well recorded through Wagner’s and Prigozhin’s telegram handles, which became the mouthpiece of these clashes. Its military successes at the battlefront have also garnered support from a group of oligarchs who, wary of financial losses from thousands of coordinated sanctions imposed by the West, wish that the pointless war ended.
PMC Wagner credits itself with delivering Russia’s face-saver victory in Ukraine’s Bakhmut in May this year. But 10 months in the meatgrinder have manifested MoD and Wagner’s internal chasms, ultimately leading to an armed rebellion.
The centre of gravity of Prigozhin’s mutiny was a less known but important town called Rostov-un-don, the headquarters of the southern military command of the Russian Army and its command centre for the Ukraine war.
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The point of no return
In a major embarrassment for the Russian Army, the inhabitants of Rostov fed and cheered for Wagner as its tanks rolled down. What was more intriguing was how General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Defence, and General Vladimir Alekseyev, Deputy Military Intelligence Chief, sat dispirited near Prigozhin with no attempt to fight back as the latter went on disparaging the military’s inept leadership in Ukraine.
The obvious questions are these: What makes Prigozhin so defiant and fearless? What could it mean for Russia’s future; that’s if, he survives?
Prigozhin enjoys support from at least three actors within Russia – a section within the FSB, a set of oligarchs unhappy with the war and a segment of the public that sees him as a hero.
When the first column of Wagner forces led by Prigozhin marched into Rostov, FSB’s fortress plan to guard the city fell without any opposition despite the presence of the Rostov Police, OMON (Special Purpose Mobile Unit) and SOBR (Special Unit of Quick Response).
Rostov police did not detain anyone for an unsanctioned rally that trampled the streets and the egos of the world’s second-largest military. Even as Putin finally gave a recorded speech of his country’s enemies committing treason against Mother Russia, not even a single official stood up to Wagner columns in Rostov, and not a single oligarch expressed anger at a PMC punching above its weight.
Taking key highway M-4 via Voronozeh, the second Wagner column enroute to Moscow inflicted casualties and damage to the Russian Army. Half-a-dozen army helicopters and one army plane were shot down during the mutiny. Moscow’s Mayor declared Monday a public holiday in anticipation of more aerial losses and damage to the army from Wagner attacks.
How did Prigozhin commit the unthinkable? Not much is discussed on the factor of Wagner and the FSB in the ensuing debates on the former’s armed rebellion within Russia. Reportedly, Prigozhin and FSB aimed to change the MoD-duo Shoigu and Gerasimov with its supported Generals, perhaps even planning to oust Putin. Although all have condemned the obstinacy, obduracy and suicidal audacity shown by Prigozhin, FSB has had a role in “allowing” Prigozhin to reach this level of prominence.
The ponderable here isn’t the quick compromise reached between Prigozhin and Putin. It is Putin’s piquing non-response to months of escalating tensions between his ‘chef’ and the MoD and the apparent paralysis to crack down on the mutineers once the armed rebellion began. And just as strategic analysts racked their brains over why an all-powerful and invincible Putin wouldn’t crackdown on a PMC, he further acknowledged the dysfunction of the Russian State apparatus, confessing that his quick compromise averted a civil war in Russia. What could be more ironic than the president himself conceding to such choppy waters? However, in a hurry to show business as usual, the case of the first armed mutiny in 23 years of Putin’s rule has been closed. Something is definitely amiss.
Wagner may now have to change its registration to Belarus, thus becoming a ‘Belarusian’ PMC allowing it the space to keep defying the Russian MoD. But perhaps the most notable victory lies in Putin providing amnesty to the Wagner troops involved in the mutiny, with neither a single police case nor any other penalty against them. In fact, claims of the arrest of missing decorated MoD General Sergei Surovikin, also the deputy commander for the Russian Army in Ukraine, have surfaced. Surovikin allegedly knew about Prigozhin’s plans and supported him by not reporting them to the MoD. Suroviokin is also supported within the FSB.
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Global reactions and silences
Apart from obvious ‘notes to self’ of never backing mercenary groups, unravelling the real thinking in the Communist Party of China (CCP) and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s inner circle remains speculative. Media depictions lack authenticity as the Chinese media remains tightly controlled. In a later deleted tweet by Hu Xijin, former editor in Chief of CCP-run Global Times, he said that Russia can’t return to the country it was after Prigozhin’s armed rebellion. Chinese scholars, too, have expressed disdain at the situation in Russia despite the State’s official optics of supporting Russia in this hour of crisis.
Impact on the Ukrainian counteroffensive
The preposterous display of disarray within Russia’s power agencies has weakened the infallible and invincible image of the Russian State and its military. In the last 24 hours, UK intelligence has confirmed that Ukrainians, for the first time, have regained territory in Krasnohorivka that was lost in 2014. Even when modest, this is a major morale boost for the Ukrainians and everything opposite for the Russian soldiers that, to date, grapple with what exactly they are fighting and dying for. In a latest move, the US has imposed sanctions on four companies in the UAE, Central African Republic and Russia, accusing them of financing Wagner’s operations through illicit gold and diamond trade.
Finally, one cardinal issue merits more attention in public discussion. Preparing for any likelihood of an impending breakdown of an increasingly fragile political status quo in Russia remains uncharted territory. From India’s perspective, the latest exchange between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and FSB General Nikolai Patrushev may not do much damage control for Russia’s MoD, considering FSB’s disapproval of the latter.
Therefore, the idea of a gargantuan State – armed with the world’s largest arsenal of tactical and conventional nuclear weapons and unending reservoirs of hydrocarbons – falling victim to its internal dysfunctions is a perplexing thought. Its ramifications would spill beyond the current war in Ukraine. Perhaps the best way out for Russia is to put the war on the back burner and tend to its dangerous internal chasms before they trigger another brush with stunde null.
The writer is an Associate Fellow, Europe and Eurasia Center, at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)