Tatia Chikhladze, Senior Research Fellow, RISS

Shota Shiukashvili, Research Assistant, RISS

Relations between the founder of the Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russia’s top military leadership has been tense for months. The former is repeatedly accusing Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov in starving Wagner of ammunition, causing massive casualties of its troops. Lately, Prigozhin’s attacks on Russian military leadership has become harsher and more frequent. On 6 May, he threatened to withdraw his troops from Bakhmut, unless a massive ammunition deficit was solved. Later, he changed his mind by stating that Moscow agreed to provide supplies “needed to continue fighting in the city”. 

Prigozhin launched yet another attack on Russian defence leadership on the Victory Day, accusing the Russian military unit of abandoning positions near Bakhmut, allegedly due to “stupid” and “criminal” orders issued by senior military commanders, threatening Wagner troops with encirclement by Ukrainian forces. 

It looks quite puzzling how Prigozhin gets away with such an open and fierce attack on the Russian military, while thousands in Russia are being imprisoned for voicing even milder forms of criticism towards war in Ukraine. 

Wagner in Ukraine

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, it is believed that Prigozhin founded PMC Wagner in cooperation with the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU). The first operation of Wagner was to assist Russian regular armed forces to annex Crimea in 2014. Since then, it has been deployed in the Middle East and Africa fighting in civil wars, mainly to protect forces that are aligned with Russia.

In the early phases of Russia’s 2022 full-scale war in Ukraine, Wagner was not part of open military actions, rather it was participating in covert operations, while the Russian armed forces were under the spotlight. Four days after the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian intelligence services reported that they had uncovered a group of 400 Wagner mercenaries deployed to Kyiv to assassinate the Ukrainian President and his cabinet members. However, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), as the Russian military leadership failed to capture Kyiv and achieve initial goals, it is likely that Putin grew disappointed by the Russian military leadership and perceived their appeals for mobilisation as a threat to his regime stability. Instead, he decided to place his confidence in Wagner. In the meantime, Prigozhin saw the opportunity to prove himself valuable and expanded Wagner’s recruitment campaigns to prisons. Since then, the Wagner Group has been actively involved in attempts to take control over the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which has become the longest and bloodiest battle of the war. 

When Putin replaced the commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine Sergei Surovikin with Gerasimov as the Commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine and appointed Alexander Lapin as the Chief of the Russian Ground Forces, many viewed the shake-up as a sign of infighting in the Kremlin. Prigozhin had quite a symbiotic relationship with Surovikin, praising him on many occasions. Just within weeks after Gerasimov’s appointment, Prigozhin was barred from recruiting more prisoners. Since then, he has been complaining about the lack of supplies accusing Shoigu and Gerasimov of depriving Wagner of ammunition. 

Russian political and military elites are following Wagner’s activities closely. The existence of Wagner is already a discrediting factor for the professional military. Along with Chechen fighters, Wagner has a separate line of command, which raises questions about overall structural coherence of the Russian regular armed forces, as well as its ability to coordinate consistent military operations along the frontline. Additionally, Wagner is demonstrating a substantial autonomy from formal institutions. Amid Prigozhin’s proactive stance, the Russian elites may be concerned over what type of rewards he is aiming for in case Wagner achieves some degree of success on the ground. Due to these concerns, Russian military leadership might be interested in marginalising Wagner, including through limiting their access to ammunition.      

Why does Putin need Wagner? 

From its outset, Wagner was created with a substantial backing of the Russian authorities, to use it as a cover for military and special operations, in which official Russian bodies do not want to be openly engaged. This allows the Kremlin to deny its own participation in such operations, as well as to avoid responsibility for the brutal war crimes committed by Wagner Group.

Wagner troops are being treated as a cannon fodder on the battlefield in order to make Ukraine waste expensive ammunition and reveal their firing positions. Therefore, the key aim is to exhaust the Ukrainian army, without even tracking the number of Wagner casualties. Russian authorities are not formally accountable to the families of those who are recruited by Wagner and get killed. This way, Prigozhin’s troops help to take the pressure off from the Russian army.      

In terms of success on the battlefield, Prigozhin does not have many reasons to be proud of. His vicious attacks on Russian military leadership in conjunction with Wagner’s very modest frontline achievements, looks like an attempt to transfer responsibility for the failure of taking Bakhmut to the Russian military, particularly prior to much-anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive.

However, it seems like Vladimir Putin has his own calculations on why he is tolerating Prigozhin’s fierce attacks. Given the setbacks on the battlefield, Putin might be concerned about political control and stability at home and the head of the Wagner group is likely to be a part of his complex power balancing act. Putin tries to ensure that both within the country and on the battlefield, no actor becomes too influential to potentially challenge his political dominance. Following this logic, having rival groups, such as regular armed forces and Wagner to counterbalance and constantly compete with each other aligns with Putin’s idea of maintaining power even if it is not the most effective strategy in the theater of war. 

Photo: AP/SCANPIX/LETA

The views expressed in this article are the author’s, and do not represent those of RISS or any other institution.