Wagner Group
-Jason
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Mercenaries have been an element of warfare going back as long as there have been written records. In essence, these are soldiers for hire who supplement a state’s army, take the place of a non-existent military, or fight alongside rebel forces. Mercenaries have gained both infamy and fame in many conflicts fought throughout the world. These paramilitary groups still exist in contemporary times and can give the governments that employ them plausible deniability while extending their political and military power. However, employing mercenaries can be risky: a soldier-for-hire generally is loyal only so long as the pay doesn’t dry up or the enemy doesn’t offer more.
The Wagner Group is one of these mercenary forces; it has operated for Vladimir Putin’s Russian government since 2013. The organization was created by Russian veterans of the First and Second Chechen Wars, fought between December 1994 and August 1996 and August 1999 and April 2009, respectively. The brutal conditions and alleged war crimes that took place in both Chechen Wars contributed to Russian war veterans looking for better financial opportunities than the regular army was willing to pay.
Dmitry Valerievich Utkin had fought in the Chechen Wars as part of the Russian Army and is allegedly the founder of the Wagner Group. After retiring from the Russian Army, Utkin joined the Slavonic Corps, a Hong Kong based private military company which recruited Russian veterans. The Slavonic Corps had been founded by two other former Russian nationals: Vadim Gusev and Yevgeniy Sidorov who offered $5,000 US dollars per month to guard Syrian installations. The Slavonic Corps was the spear tip of Putin’s Russian intervention force in Syria.
The Syrian Civil War, raging from March 2011 to present, has been viewed by Vladimir Putin as opportunity to reinforce Russian political and military ties in the Middle East. It began with the uprisings during the 2011 Arab Spring, which resulted in the overthrow of several governments from North Africa to Arabian Peninsula. In Syria, tens of thousands of protestors demanded the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad. Assad’s father, Hafez, had been the leader of the Syrian branch of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, and dictator of the country, from 1971 until his death in 2000. Bashar al-Assad was not willing to surrender power and a civil war engulfed the region.
Al-Assad’s forces faced resistance from multiple fronts: Arab-Kurdish fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Syrian Interim Government, Syrian Salvation Government, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front, and the Islamic State. Those loyal to al-Assad struggled to control the major cities and countryside as rebel forces seized military installations, weapons, and welcomed defections from the Syrian military. This resulted in a confusing series of military aid and armed strikes flooding into country as the foreign interests of Europe, the United States, and other Middle Eastern countries muddied the civil war.
Military forces from the United States concentrated their efforts in destroying Islamic State paramilitary groups while also supplying “moderate” rebels against Assad. Turkey also conducted a controversial military intervention by conducting air strikes against Islamic State fighters, as well as targeting the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces who were allied to the United States. This conflict spilled over into Iraq as Islamic State forces invaded and occupied large portions of its northern territories.
Al-Assad held several meetings with Vladimir Putin requesting Russian military aid to prop up his faltering military. Putin was happy to oblige, yet he needed to be careful to avoid conflict with the United States and its allies. The Slavonic Corps was one of the companies the Russians could “employ” to aid their Syrian allies. In theory, they were there to guard facilities, but the Slavonic Corps fighters actively engaged all rebel forces and helped the Assad government crush the opposition. Although Assad has been able to maintain his control of the country, there is no lasting peace: the fighting in many regions is still flaring.
Utkin returned to Russia in October 2013 and created his own mercenary organization, the Wagner Group, allegedly named after the German composer Richard Wagner. The Wagner Group did not have too long a wait for employment to come their way: Vladimir Putin bought their services for the 2014 Ukrainian-Russo War. This conflict was instigated by Russian separatists, supported by Moscow, in the Donbass who wanted to break away from Ukraine following the ousting of Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych in February 2014.
Vladimir Putin declared that he would support the Russian separatists’ secession from Ukraine. Ukraine had refused to join the Russian Federation following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, instead establishing itself as an independent country, which was recognized by the rest of the world. However, Ukraine is one of the wealthiest and populus states to leave the Soviet Republics. The mineral and agricultural resources of Ukraine, its long borders with Russia, as well as Ukrainian access to the Black Sea created a strategic vulnerability for Putin’s Russia; the situation was ripe for a Russian occupation of parts of country.
Putin was vocal in the media about the overthrow of Yanukovych, claiming it was illegal and the elections that replaced him were shams. Yanukovych fled to Moscow waited for his Russian patrons to help reinstall his government. However, Putin again had to be careful to frame the reasons for Russian forces to seize not only the eastern portion of Ukraine around the Donbass, but also the annexation of Crimea back into the Russian Federation. His solution was to have Wagner Group fighters pose as Russian separatists fighting against the Ukrainian government.
Utkin and his fighters were quickly identified in both the Donbass and Crimea. When this was exposed by Western media, Putin was able to deflect blame from Moscow by saying they were either volunteers or had been independently hired by Yanukovych. At this point, most of the Wagner fighters were former members of either the Russian military or the Slavonic Corps, which made them incredibly effective mercenaries. While the Russians were able to occupy the Donbass and Crimea, it came at a cost for Putin: the Ukrainians tightened their diplomatic relationship with both the United States and NATO. Utkin and his contractors earned accolades from Putin for achieving the objectives given to them.
However, Utkin himself stopped appearing in public around 2016 and a new commander of the Wagner Group: Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin is a former convict turned oligarch who has been called “Putin’s chef” due to his tied to the Russian president. He was freed from prison in 1990 following sentences amounting to roughly nine years for robbery. Shortly after his release the Soviet Union collapsed and Prigozhin quickly opened a series of businesses that included grocery stores. He also became heavily involved in the gambling industry and used that money to found restaurants. With these “innocent” business dealings, Prigozhin moved closer and closer to Putin.
Prigozhin was able to take over the Wagner Group and he quickly gained a reputation for keeping recruitment up and successfully completing operations. With the 2014 conflict in Ukraine declared over, Putin next used the Wagner Group for combat operations in Africa and further afield. Again, Putin made claims that the mercenaries were being requested to bolster existing African governments against Islamic terrorists. Wagner forces have been deployed to Sudan, the Central African Republic, Madagascar, Libya, Mozambique, and Mali since 2015. Rumors abound that Wagner forces have been deployed further in Africa, as well as Belarus, Serbia, and even Venezuela. Accusations of war crimes and crimes against civilians have constantly been reported wherever Wagner forces operate.
The recent and ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen both the expansion, and potential collapse, of the Wagner Group. Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine saying that the purpose was to eliminate the supposedly Neo-Nazi government of Volodymyr Zelensky. Regular Russian military forces, Moscow-sympathetic units within the Russian-occupied Ukraine, and the Wagner Group attempted to overwhelm Ukraine beginning on the morning of 22 February 2022.
Despite gaining tracts of western and south-western Ukraine in the opening days of the conflict, the Russians failed to achieve their goals of seizing all major cities and military sites. What should have been a fast-overwhelming victory instead transformed into a grinding campaign of attrition. Since the 2014 Russian occupation of western Ukraine and Crimea, Ukrainian military forces had closely worked, and been trained by, the United States armed forces. Some advanced Western weapons had been introduced into the Ukrainian arsenal, and almost immediately after Russian troops crossed the border, more NATO and American weapons bolstered the Ukrainians. Fighting continued to intensify and the Ukrainians accused the Russian military and Wagner mercenaries of committing war crimes.
Once the battle shifted away from rapid armor advances to punishing urban warfare and static warfare, forces from the Wagner Group started to be assigned to more dangerous areas of the front. Casualties became increasingly heavy for both the Russian military and their mercenary allies. Prigozhin actively recruited from the Russian prison system offering pardons if the inmates signed up with Wagner. This was not to say conditions necessarily improved for the new recruits: if they deserted and were caught, the former prisoners were executed. In addition to this draconian system, Prigozhin had complained multiple times about the poor conditions, lack of supplies, and causalities that his men have suffered.
Tensions had been building between Prigozhin and senior Russian military commanders since October 2022. Prigozhin complained that both Sergei K. Shoigu, the minister of defense, and General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, were corrupt and handicapping Russia’s ability to win the war against Ukraine. Cracks were beginning to appear in the forces struggling to expand, much less maintain, Russian gains in Ukraine.
Shoigu and Gerasimov ignored the taunts and by May 2023, the relationship between the Wagner boss, his mercenaries, and their immediate superiors plummeted further. While attacking the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Prigozhin again released a scathing critique regarding the lack of ammunition his men had been receiving. He even threatened to withdraw Wagner forces from the city and abandon the Russian forces they were supporting. Supplies, though not replacements, were distributed to Prigozhin and his operators.
Prigozhin, with a recording released on 23 June 2023, started an extraordinary series of events that are still ongoing. He called for, and initiated, an armed mutiny by the Wagner Group forces after accusing Shoigu and Gerasimov of attacking his forces. Prigozhin stated that Russian forces had bombarded Wagner camps and caused hundreds of casualties. This accusation, along with Prigozhin’s statement regarding the war’s justifications as being false, led to Wagner forces seizing the city of Rostov-on-the-Don while a column of 25,000 mercenaries and vehicles pushed towards Moscow. Reports from Rostov showed citizens giving Wagner forces water and flowers and the Russian military forces stationed in the city did not fire upon the mercenaries as they captured the town, the military command post, and supplies for use against the Ukrainians.
Speculation regarding the intention of Prigozhin and his troops grabbed the world’s attention for the following 24 hours. The mayor of Moscow announced that the next day was a holiday for non-essential workers and all activities were suspended for a week. Units from the Russian National Guard were mobilized and occupied key strategic areas of the Russian capital. Hostile aircraft and helicopters were reported by Prigozhin of attacking the Wagner column with the results of several helicopters having been shot down. It seemed very likely that the Wagner boss could reach Moscow and directly confront the military commanders he hated. However, one person he had not yet criticized was Vladimir Putin.
As the hours of 24 June ticked by and the distance between Wagner and Moscow diminished, Putin made an appearance on Russian television announcing that this armed mutiny would be crushed and its perpetrators severely punished. While Prigozhin repeatedly announced that this was a “march for justice” and not an attempt at a coup, his actions forced the Russian president to take a hardline stance against a threat to his rule. The potential for a possible Russian civil war erupting while still engaged in the Ukrainian War suddenly seemed real.
Belorussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, sought to defuse the situation through negotiation. While still over 200 miles from Moscow, Prigozhin and Lukashenko worked out a deal to stop further bloodshed. Prigozhin called off his forces and ordered them to return to their camps in exchange for guarantees that no investigations against himself or his mercenaries would be conducted by Moscow. He would go into exile in Belarus and the Wagner troops were to be given the option to join the regular Russian armed forces and face no charges.
The shockwaves of the armed mutiny are still reverberating. The sudden withdrawal and redirection of Wagner forces left the Russians units they supported exposed to Ukrainian attacks. A major blow has been delt to Vladimir Putin’s nearly unlimited control of the Russian state: if it is true that the forces at Rostov did not fight the Wagner mercenaries and that other Russian units also put up little or no resistance, then maybe Putin’s power has been weakened. Additionally, reports are being released the Moscow is still going to launch its investigation into the incident and Prigozhin is being combative towards the Russian military and possibly Vladimir Putin as well.