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Wagner uprising
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Wagner uprising “most significant threat” Putin has faced – CBS News
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Russia pulls back from brink of crisis after deal reached to end Wagner insurrection | CNN
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CNN
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In the end, the uprising was short-lived. But for a brief and chaotic 36 hours, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power appeared to be under serious threat, as thousands of Wagner fighters led by warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin closed in on the country’s capital.
With the private mercenary group claiming to have seized key military sites in two Russian cities, the Kremlin was forced to deploy heavily armed troops to the streets of Moscow and warn residents to stay indoors.
But the face-off never came.
On Saturday, the Kremlin said a deal had been reached to end the insurrection, with Prigozhin heading to neighboring Belarus and Wagner fighters turning back from their march.
“Now is the moment when blood can be shed,” Prigozhin warned on Saturday. “Therefore, realizing all the responsibility for the fact that Russian blood will be shed from one of the sides, we turn our columns around and leave in the opposite direction to the field camps according to the plan.”
Wagner fighters will face no legal action, and the Kremlin has “always respected (Wagner’s) heroic deeds,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
“You will ask me what will happen to Prigozhin personally? The criminal case will be dropped against him. He himself will go to Belarus,” Peskov said, adding that the situation had been resolved “without further losses.”
The abrupt about-face follows a rare, remarkable challenge to the Kremlin that threatened to plunge the country into crisis and destabilize its already stumbling war efforts in Ukraine.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a staunch Kremlin ally, condemned Prighozhin’s actions and said, “bloodshed could have happened.”
“The arrogance of one person could lead to such dangerous consequences and draw a large number of people into the conflict,” he added.
The threat of civil war leaves the country – and the Putin regime – in a very different place Sunday than it had been just two days prior. And with Russia possessing the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, that instability has other nations on edge, prompting emergency meetings and high-level talks.
Putin has built a reputation as an autocrat with an iron grip on power since he became president in 2000 – with his reign second in length only to Joseph Stalin, the Communist leader whose image Putin has tried to rehabilitate.
The mysterious deaths of Putin critics over the years, and more recent critics of the Ukraine war, has only bolstered the Kremlin’s veneer of total control and the consequences for those who step out of line.
That has now been shaken badly by the Wagner insurrection – with experts warning Putin may be more exposed than he has been in the last 23 years.
“Putin is clearly weakened. There is blood in the water,” said Evelyn Farkas, executive director of the US-based think tank McCain Institute. She added that this near-crisis could be seen as an opportunity for Putin critics or rivals within the Kremlin.
Some international observers have expressed surprise at what they view as a lackluster Russian response to the insurrection, with the lack of a rapid, cohesive strategy highlighting the military’s weakened capabilities.
Putin will also have to contend with shaky public sentiment within Russia. Civilian support for the war in Ukraine remains high, but cracks had begun to show by early this year, with some Russians tuning out the propaganda on air and others finding ways to circumvent Internet restrictions.
In the months since, the war has arrived on Russian soil as Ukraine launched its counteroffensive. Russia’s Belgorod region saw a cross-border attack by anti-Putin Russian nationals in May, while the Kremlin itself came under alleged drone attacks.
The emerging split between Moscow and some of its civilians was on clear display Saturday, as Prigozhin and his forces prepared to depart the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, where they had briefly occupied a key military facility. A video verified and geolocated by CNN show Prigozhin’s vehicle stopping as a resident approached to shake the Wagner boss’ hand; around them, residents cheer.
In pictures: Russian President Vladimir Putin
The location adds to the moment’s significance: Rostov-on-Don is an important regional capital with logistical and strategic value, housing the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District.
“All of this is spilling out into the Russian heartland,” said retired US Army Brig. Gen. Peter Zwack on Saturday.
Beth Sanner, former deputy director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration, said the incident could see Putin “double down on repression in Russia” in a bid to wrest back control – as well as step up its fighting in Ukraine, in the face of international scrutiny.
“He has been humiliated,” Sanner said. “He’s going to try to reassert (his strength) … Putin will not just stand there and allow all of this to flourish and blossom.”
The insurrection has also turned a spotlight to Russia’s nuclear capabilities and what might push Putin to use them – questions that have loomed over the war in Ukraine ever since it began.
Putin has repeatedly engaged in nuclear saber-rattling, announcing earlier this year that it would store tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, one of Moscow’s closest allies, which helped launch the initial invasion of Ukraine. The first of those weapons arrived this month.
On Saturday, two US officials told CNN that they had not seen any change to Russia’s nuclear posture since the insurrection started.
A State Department spokesperson added that the US has “no reason to adjust our conventional or nuclear force posture,” and that it has “long-standing, established communication channels with Russia on nuclear issues.”
But those channels are now significantly narrower than before. Earlier this year, Russia suspended participation in its only nuclear arms control treaty with the US – meaning the two nations are no longer required to share information like the location of certain missiles and launchers.
US intelligence officials had anticipated last year that there was an internal power struggle between the Wagner group and the Russian government, as the invasion of Ukraine stalled, according to top US officials.
They even saw signs that Prigozhin was making preparations for a major challenge, including by amassing weapons and ammunition, said one Western intelligence official and another person familiar with the intelligence.
But they didn’t anticipate Prigozhin would storm the Rostov region – and the insurrection unfolded so quickly that it caught US and European officials off guard, sources say.
US officials convened emergency meetings on Friday night to assess the events, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with counterparts from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and the European Union on Saturday.
The leader of the US, United Kingdom, France and Germany also spoke on Saturday, before Wagner pulled back from its advance, according to Downing Street.
Countries near Russia are also on guard, with the president of former Soviet state Kazakhstan scheduling an emergency meeting of his Security Council on Sunday. The council will form a plan to contain any “possible negative consequences” of the insurrection that could impact Kazakh citizens or the economy, said the presidential office.
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Moscow has stepped back from civil war with Wagner. But the danger’s not over, experts warn | CNN
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CNN
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Within a remarkable day and a half, Russia faced the very real threat of an armed insurrection, with President Vladimir Putin vowing to punish Wagner fighters marching toward Moscow and occupying cities along the way – before a sudden deal with Belarus seemed to defuse the crisis as rapidly as it emerged.
But much remains uncertain, with experts warning the rare uprising isn’t likely to disappear so quickly without consequences down the line.
Putin must now navigate the aftermath of the most serious challenge to his authority since he came to power in 2000, following a series of dizzying events that was closely – and nervously – watched by the world and cheered by Ukraine.
Outspoken Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is being sent to Belarus, apparently unscathed, but he may have painted a target on his own back like never before.
Here’s what we know.
Prigozhin, the bombastic head of the Wagner group, agreed to leave Russia for neighboring Belarus on Saturday, in a deal apparently brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
The deal includes Prigozhin pulling back his troops from their march toward the capital, said a Kremlin spokesperson on Saturday.
The criminal charges against him will be dropped, said the spokesperson. Wagner fighters will face no legal action for their part in the insurrection, and will instead sign contracts with Russia’s Ministry of Defense – a move Prigozhin had previously rejected as an attempt to bring his paramilitary force in line.
Wagner troops previously claimed they had seized key military facilities in two Russian cities; by Saturday, videos authenticated and geolocated by CNN showed Prigozhin and his forces withdrawing from one of those cities, Rostov-on-Don.
It’s not clear where Prigozhin is now. The Kremlin is unaware of his whereabouts, the spokesperson said Saturday.
The crisis in Russia erupted Friday when Prigozhin accused Russia’s military of attacking a Wagner camp and killing his men – and vowed to retaliate by force.
Prigozhin then led his troops into Rostov-on-Don and claimed to have taken control of key military facilities in the Voronezh region, where there was an apparent clash between Wagner units and Russian forces.
Prigozhin claimed it wasn’t a coup but a “march of justice.” But that did little to appease Moscow, with a top security official calling Prigozhin’s actions a “staged coup d’état,” according to Russian state media.
Russia’s Defense Ministry denied attacking Wagner’s troops, and Russia’s internal security force opened a criminal case against Prigozhin.
Then came a remarkable national address from Putin.
In a speech that was broadcast across Russia on Saturday morning local time, a visibly furious Putin vowed to punish those “on a path to treason.”
Wagner’s “betrayal” was a “stab in the back of our country and our people,” he said, likening the group’s actions to the 1917 Russian Revolution that toppled Tsar Nicholas II in the midst of WWI.
Things were tense on the ground, with civilians in Voronezh told to stay home. Meanwhile, Moscow stepped up its security measures across the capital, declaring Monday a non-workday. Photos show Russian forces in body armor and wielding automatic weapons near a highway outside Moscow.
All signs pointed to an impending armed confrontation in the capital as rumors and uncertainty swirled.
Then almost as suddenly as it began, the short-lived mutiny fizzled out with the Belarus deal seeming putting out the fire – at least for now.
Much remains unclear, such as what will happen to Prigozhin’s role within Wagner and the Ukraine war, and whether all his fighters will be contracted to Russia’s military.
The Kremlin spokesperson said on Saturday he “cannot answer” what position Prigozhin will take in Belarus. Prigozhin himself has provided little detail about his agreement to halt the advance on Moscow.
The Wagner group is “an independent fighting company” with different conditions than the Russian military, said retired US Army Maj. Mike Lyons on Saturday. For instance, Wagner fighters are better fed than the military – meaning a full assimilation would be difficult.
“Maybe some will splinter off,” he added. “Those people are loyal to the man, Prigozhin, not to the country, not to the mission. I think we’ve got a lot more questions that are not answered right now.”
Chaos in Russia: A throwback to previous centuries?
The danger isn’t over for the Wagner boss, either, experts say.
“Putin doesn’t forgive traitors. Even if Putin says, ‘Prigozhin, you go to Belarus,’ he is still a traitor and I think Putin will never forgive that,” said Jill Dougherty, CNN’s former Moscow bureau chief and a longstanding expert on Russian affairs.
It’s possible we could see Prigozhin “get killed in Belarus,” she added – but it’s a tough dilemma for Moscow because as long as Prigozhin “has some type of support, he is a threat, regardless of where he is.”
Putin now faces real problems, too.
Multiple experts told CNN that while the Russian president survived the stand-off, he now looks weak – not only to the world and his enemies, but to his own people and military. That could pose a risk if there are skeptics or rivals within Moscow who see an opportunity to undermine Putin’s position.
“If I were Putin, I would be worried about those people on the streets of Rostov cheering the Wagner people as they leave,” said Dougherty.
One video, geolocated and verified by CNN, showed crowds cheering as Prigozhin’s vehicle departed Rostov-on-Don. The vehicle stopped when one individual approached and shook Prigozhin’s hand.
“Why are average Russians on the street cheering people who just tried to carry out a coup?” Dougherty said. “That means that maybe they support them or they like them. Whatever it is, it’s really bad news for Putin.”
Video shows Prigozhin leaving Russian military headquarters
Prigozhin has known Putin since the 1990s, and was nicknamed “Putin’s chef” after winning lucrative catering contracts with the Kremlin. But Russian-backed separatist movements in Ukraine in 2014 set the foundation for Prigozhin’s transformation into a warlord.
Prigozhin founded Wagner to be a shadowy mercenary outfit that fought both in eastern Ukraine and, increasingly, for Russian-backed causes around the world.
Wagner was thrust into the spotlight during the Ukraine war, with the fighters appearing to win tangible progress where regular Russian troops failed. However, its brutal tactics are believed to have caused high numbers of casualties.
As the war dragged on, Prigozhin and Russia’s military leadership have engaged in a public feud, with the Wagner boss accusing the military of not giving his forces ammunition and bemoaning the lack of battlefield successes by regular military units.
He was repeatedly critical of their handling of the conflict, casting himself as ruthless and competent in comparison.
Prigozhin was always careful to direct his blame towards Russia’s military leadership, not Putin, and had defended the reasoning for the war in Ukraine.
That was, until Friday as the insurrection kicked off.
In a remarkable statement, Prigozhin said Moscow invaded Ukraine under false pretenses devised by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and that Russia was actually losing ground on the battlefield.
Steve Hall, a former CIA chief of Russia operations, said even seasoned Russia watchers were taken aback by recent events.
“Everybody is scratching their heads,” he told CNN. “The only sense I can make from a day like today, you have two guys who found themselves in untenable situations and had to find their way out.”
Hall said Prigozhin may have felt he had bitten off more than he could chew as his column of troops marched towards Moscow. But at the same time Putin faced the very real prospect of having to defeat some 25,000 Wagner mercenaries.
Sending Prigozhin to Belarus was a face saving move for both sides.
But Hall said Putin comes out ultimately worse off and weakened.
“Putin should have seen it coming literally months ago. We’ll see how it ends up. I don’t think the story is over yet,” Hall said.
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Wagner chief to leave Russia for Belarus in deal that ends armed insurrection | CNN
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CNN
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Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, has agreed to leave Russia for Belarus, the Kremlin said Saturday, in a deal that ends an armed insurrection, which posed the greatest threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority in decades.
In a conference call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said an agreement was struck with Prigozhin, referring to an apparent deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
“You will ask me what will happen to Prigozhin personally?” Peskov said. “The criminal case will be dropped against him. He himself will go to Belarus.”
The Wagner boss had earlier turned his troops around “toward our field camps, in accordance with the plan.” Peskov said those troops would face no “legal action” for marching to Moscow, and Wagner fighters will sign contracts with Russia’s Ministry of Defense.
The announcement defuses a crisis that began when Wagner troops took control of a key military facility in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and some fighters advanced towards the capital.
Prigozhin has been publicly critical of Russia’s military leadership and their handling of the war in Ukraine – with few consequences. But he crossed numerous red lines with Putin over the weekend.
A somber-looking Russian president addressed the nation and called Wagner’s actions “a stab in the back of our country and our people.”
The president described events as an insurrection and Moscow began to scale up its security measures.
But by Saturday evening, Prigozhin’s calculus appeared to have changed, and the mercenary said his troops, who were 124 miles (200 kilometers) from Moscow, were stopping their advance in order to avoid bloodshed.
Videos, authenticated and geolocated by CNN, also showed Prigozhin and Wagner forces withdrawing from their positions at Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don.
In the video, Prigozhin is seen sitting in the backseat of a vehicle. Crowds cheer and the vehicle comes to a stop as an individual approaches it and shakes Prigozhin’s hand.
Saturday’s dramatic events come off the back of Prigozhin’s very public and months-long feud with Russia’s military leadership. He has previously accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov of not giving his forces ammunition and was critical of their handling of the conflict, but has always defended the reasoning for the war.
On Friday, Prigozhin accused Russian forces of striking a Wagner military camp and killing “a huge amount” of his fighters – a claim Russia’s Ministry of Defense has denied and called an “informational provocation.”
The private military chief seemingly built influence with Putin over the course of the conflict, with his Wagner forces taking a leading role in the labored but ultimately successful assault on Bakhmut earlier this year. The capture of that city was a rare Russian gain in Ukraine in recent months, boosting Prigozhin’s profile further.
But it appears that Prigozhin had turned not merely against the military leadership’s handling of the invasion of Ukraine, but also against the longtime Russian leader and his strategy.
On Friday, he said Moscow invaded Ukraine under false pretenses devised by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and that Russia is actually losing ground on the battlefield.
“There are 25,000 of us and we are going to find out why there is such chaos in the country. There are 25,000 of us waiting as a tactical reserve and a strategic reserve. It’s the whole army and the whole country, everyone who wants to, join us. We must end this debacle,” he said on Telegram.
Wagner upped the gambit and went on to take control of military facilities in Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh, a city that lies some 600 kilometers (372 miles) to the north of Rostov. Russia’s domestic intelligence service, FSB, opened a criminal case against Prighozhin for his threats, accusing him of calling for “an armed rebellion.”
Wagner troops were then reported to be moving towards the capital, prompting a major security operation in the Moscow region and a counter-terrorist regime being put in place, according to Russian officials.
Russian security forces in body armor and equipped with automatic weapons took a position near a highway linking Moscow with southern Russia, according to photos published by Russian media. Monday was declared a non-working day and public and other large-scale events have been suspended until July 1 in the Moscow region, according to Russian state run media TASS.
During his speech Saturday, Putin said Wagner’s “betrayal” and “any actions that fracture our unity,” are “a stab in the back of our country and our people.”
Responding to Putin’s speech, Prigozhin said on Telegram that the president was “deeply mistaken.”
“We are patriots of our Motherland, we fought and are fighting,” he said in audio messages.The Wagner chief claimed his forces seized the Russian Southern Military Headquarters in the city of Rostov-on-Don “without firing a single shot,” suggesting that “the country supports us.”
The Rostov base plays a key role in Russia’s war on Ukraine, due to its proximity to the countries’ shared border.
The temperature cooled following the deal apparently brokered by Belarus’ leader. Yet Prighozhin has provided scant details about his agreement to about-face.
When asked what position Prigozhin would take in Belarus, Peskov said he “cannot answer the question.” Peskov said Lukashenko was able to draw on a personal relationship with Prigozhin to broker the deal.
“The fact is that Alexander Grigoryevich [Lukashenko] has known Prigozhin personally for a long time, for about 20 years,” he said. “And it was his personal proposal, which was agreed with Putin. We are grateful to the President of Belarus for these efforts.”
Many top Russian officials had rallied to Putin’s side over the past day. Russian intelligence official, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseev, posted a video about Prigozhin’s actions that day, describing it as a coup attempt.
Sergei Naryshkin, who heads Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, described the events as an “attempted armed rebellion.”
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, another key player in the war, spoke of a “vile betrayal” by Prigozhin on Telegram. “The rebellion must be crushed, and if this requires harsh measures, then we are ready!” he said.
Russian officials said detachments of Chechen special forces had been seen in Rostov to suppress the rebellion. However, CNN was unable to independently confirm that Chechen units have arrived in Rostov.
The FSB also responded on Friday, urging Wagner fighters to detain their leader and opening a criminal case against the militia boss accusing him of “calling for an armed rebellion.”
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stalled earlier this year, top US officials said they saw indications of tensions between the Kremlin and the Prigozhin. Officials said the US determined as early as January there was an internal power struggle underway and have been gathering and closely monitoring intelligence on the volatile dynamic ever since.
But US and Western officials are being careful not to weigh in on the events because of how Putin could weaponize any perceived outside involvement in the escalating crisis, sources familiar with the administration’s thinking told CNN.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has warned Western countries against using Prigozhin’s rebellion “to achieve Russophobic goals.”
The European Union, which borders Russia, has activated its crisis response center to coordinate between member nations in reaction to the developments in Russia.
Meanwhile, Ukraine took advantage of Russia’s chaotic security situation on Saturday, launching simultaneous counter-offensives in multiple directions, Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy Defense Minister, said in a Telegram post.
“The eastern grouping of troops today launched an offensive in several directions at the same time,” Maliar said, naming Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Bakhmut, Bohdanivka, Yahidne, Klishchiivka and Kurdyumivka among the places where the offensive was launched.
Maliar said that “there is progress in all directions” without giving any further detail. Maliar said that “heavy fighting continues in all directions of the offensive in the south.” In the South “the enemy is on the defensive, making great efforts to stop our offensive actions,” Maliar added.
A spokesperson for the Ukrainian military in eastern Ukraine earlier told CNN that Ukraine will benefit from the events in Russia. “The fact that Prigozhin took all his Wagner fighters into Russia now will definitely have an effect on our frontline,” Serhii Cherevatyi said.
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Wagner chief Prigozhin says he’s accepted truce brokered by Belarus
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The chief of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said Saturday that he’d agreed to halt his forces’ “movement inside Russia, and to take further steps to de-escalate tensions,” in an agreement brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
The Wagner group boss earlier ordered his forces to march toward Moscow after unleashing a long series of videotaped remarks threatening to topple Russia’s military leadership, which he blasted as having misled the country and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself about the Ukraine war.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state media late Saturday night that as part of the deal, Prigozhin will move to Belarus, and a Russian criminal case launched on Friday into his actions will be dropped. Wagner fighters who took part in the march towards Moscow would also not be prosecuted, Peskov said.
Putin worked from the Kremlin all day Saturday, according to Peskov, who added that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would not be impacted by the infighting.
The Wagner boss’ actions drew an accusation of a “rebellion” from Putin earlier in the day, though the Russian leader did not name Prigozhin individually. Prigozhin didn’t say whether the Kremlin had responded to his demand to oust Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, held two meetings to negotiate a deal that includes “security guarantees for the Wagner PMC fighters,” a news release published by Belarus’ state-run news agency said. The Kremlin confirmed the discussions between Putin and Lukashenko had taken place.
Prigozhin said on his official Telegram channel that he had agreed to turn his mercenary forces back, “realizing all the responsibility for the fact that Russian blood will be shed.” He said his forces had marched to within 120 miles of Moscow without shedding a “single drop of the blood of our fighters.”
A U.S. official confirmed to CBS News earlier Saturday that Wagner forces had been moving north toward Moscow. That came after the private army had seized control of a regional Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a city near the border with Ukraine, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence briefing.
STRINGER / REUTERS
Heavy military trucks and armored vehicles rolled through streets in central Moscow and soldiers were deployed outside the main building of the Defense Ministry.
Earlier, the governor of Russia’s Lipetsk province said the mercenary forces led by Prigozhin in an armed rebellion had moved troops out of Ukraine and into the key region about 225 miles south of Moscow. CBS News correspondent Ian Lee reported earlier Saturday that Wagner troops had “seized another city halfway to Moscow.”
The U.S. official confirmed to CBS News that Prigozhin had about 25,000 troops under his command. His forces played a crucial role in the war in Ukraine and succeeded in taking the eastern city of Bakhmut, where the bloodiest and longest battles have taken place.
Prigozhin had become publicly frustrated with Russian military leaders who he accused of botching the war in Ukraine and hamstringing his forces in the field.
Putin called the Wagner uprising “a stab in the back.” The challenge to Russia’s military leadership by Prigozhin, a longtime Putin ally with a ruthless reputation, posed the biggest threat Putin’s leadership in his over two decades in power.
During his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Zelensky said the disruptions in Russia exposed “simply complete chaos” with its military and that Russians “control nothing.”
Reporting contributed by Haley Ott, Ian Lee and David Martin.
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Putin is at risk of losing his iron grip on power. The next 24 hours are critical | CNN
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This just does not happen in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Especially in public.
The Russian president is facing the most serious threat to his hold on power in all the 23 years he’s run the nuclear state. And it is staggering to behold the veneer of total control he has maintained all that time – the ultimate selling point of his autocracy – crumble overnight.
It was both inevitable and impossible. Inevitable, as the mismanagement of the war had meant only a system as homogenously closed and immune to criticism as the Kremlin could survive such a heinous misadventure. And impossible as Putin’s critics simply vanish, or fall out of windows, or are poisoned savagely. Yet now the fifth-largest army in the world is halfway through a weekend in which fratricide – the turning of their guns upon their fellow soldiers – was briefly the only thing that could save the Moscow elite from collapse.
At the time of writing, 24 hours of extraordinary shark-jumping culminated with Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin agreeing to reverse his advance to within 120 miles (200 kilometers) of Moscow’s city limits and send his columns back to “field camps, according to the plan.” It is a last-minute reversal intended, he said, to avoid “bloodshed.” Shortly before this audio statement, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko apparently contacted Prigozhin, with the permission of Putin, to negotiate this remarkable climbdown, according to a statement from Belarusian officials and Russian state media reports.
Much of this sudden resolution is as curious and inexplicable as the crisis it solved. Prigozhin appears – thus far – to have had none of his demands heeded. The top brass of Russia’s defense ministry is still in place. He has done incalculable damage to Putin’s control over the Russian state, and shown how easy it is to take control of the key military city of Rostov-on-Don and then move fast towards the capital. And it took the intervention of Lukashenko, an ally whom Putin treats more as a subordinate than an equal, to engineer an end to this ghastly of weekends for the Kremlin.
More details of how this came to be will emerge. And the lasting damage done to Putin by this armed insurrection will be compounded by some key decisions the Kremlin head must now make. Will he pardon Prigozhin, and his fighters, or retract his statement about “inevitable punishment” for “blackmail and terrorist methods?” Does he make changes in the defense elite to placate Wagner’s head? What does all of this say to the Russian military, elite and people about who is really in charge of the country?
The rage and tension that has been building for months has not suddenly been assuaged. It has instead been accentuated.
So accustomed are we to viewing Putin as a master tactician, that the opening salvos of Prigozhin’s disobedience were at times assessed as a feint – a bid by Putin to keep his generals on edge with a loyal henchman as their outspoken critic. But what we have seen – with Putin forced to admit that Rostov-on-Don, his main military hub, is out of his control – puts paid to any idea that this was managed by the Kremlin.
It is likely however Wagner’s units planned some of this for a while. The justification for this rebellion appeared urgent and spontaneous – an apparent air strike on a Wagner camp in the forest, which the Russian Ministry of Defense has denied – appeared hours after a remarkable dissection of the rationale behind the war by Prigozhin.
He partially spoke the truth about the war’s disastrous beginnings: Russia was not under threat from NATO attack, and Russians were not being persecuted. The one deceit he maintained was to suggest Russia’s top brass was behind the invasion plan, and not Putin himself. Wagner’s forces have pulled themselves together very fast and moved quickly into Rostov. That’s hard to do spontaneously in one afternoon.
Perhaps Prigozhin dreamt he could push Putin into a change at the top of a ministry of defense the Wagner chief has publicly berated for months. But Putin’s address on Saturday morning has eradicated that prospect. This is now an existential choice for Russia’s elite – between the president’s faltering regime, and the dark, mercenary Frankenstein it created to do its dirty work, which has turned on its masters.
It is a moment of clarity for Russia’s military too. A few years ago, Prigozhin’s mild critiques would have led to elite special forces in balaclavas walking him away. But now he roams freely, with his sights openly on marching to Moscow. Where were the FSB’s special forces during this nightmare Saturday for the Kremlin? Decimated by the war, or not eager to take on their armed and experienced comrades in Wagner?
This is not the first time this spring we have seen Moscow look weak. The drone attack on the Kremlin in May must have caused the elite around Putin to question how on earth the capital’s defenses were so weak. Days later, elite country houses were targeted by yet more Ukrainian drones. Among the Russian rich, Friday’s events will remove any question about whether they should doubt Putin’s grip on power.
Ukraine will likely be celebrating the disastrous timing of this insurrection inside Russia’s ranks. It will likely alter the course of the war in Kyiv’s favor. But rebellions rarely end in Russia – or anywhere – with the results they set out to achieve. The 1917 removal of Tsar Nicholas II in Russia turned into the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin and then the Soviet Empire.
Listen to Wagner chief vow revenge over deadly attack of his camp
As this rare Jacobean drama of Russian basic human frailty plays out, it is not inevitable that improvements will follow. Prigozhin may not prevail, and the foundations of the Kremlin’s control may not ultimately collapse. But a weakened Putin may do irrational things to prove his strength.
He may prove unable to accept the logic of defeat in the coming months on the frontlines in Ukraine. He may be unaware of the depth of discontent among his own armed forces, and lack proper control over their actions. Russia’s position as a responsible nuclear power rests on stability at the top.
A lot more can go wrong than it can go right. But it is impossible to imagine Putin’s regime will ever go back to its previous heights of control from this moment. And it is inevitable that further turmoil and change is ahead.
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What is the Wagner group, and who is Yevgeny Prigozhin?
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What is the Wagner group, and who is Yevgeny Prigozhin? – CBS News
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Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner chief turned rebel? | CNN
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Yevgeny Prigozhin is the founder and bombastic leader of Russia’s private military group Wagner. His organization is now in the midst of an apparent insurrection, after claiming control of military facilities in two cities and threatening to march on Moscow.
Prigozhin was once a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but the Kremlin leader has now vowed punishment on those involved in “an armed rebellion.”
Typically a figure who has preferred to operate in the shadows, Prigozhin and his fighters were thrust into the spotlight following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, with Wagner mercenaries playing a key role in multiple battles.
Putin and Prigozhin share relatively humble beginnings, and the Wagner chief grew up in the tougher neighborhoods of St. Petersburg, also the president’s hometown.
The men have known each other since the 1990s. Prigozhin became a wealthy oligarch by winning lucrative catering contracts with the Kremlin, earning him the moniker “Putin’s chef.”
His apparent transformation into a brutal warlord came in the aftermath of the 2014 Russian-backed separatist movement in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.
Prigozhin founded Wagner as shadowy mercenary outfit that fought both in Ukraine and, increasingly, for Russian-backed causes around the world.
CNN has tracked Wagner mercenaries in the Central African Republic, Sudan, Libya, Mozambique, Ukraine and Syria. Over the years they have developed a gruesome reputation and have been linked to multiple human rights abuses.
After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine the group was thrust to center stage. Wagner forces were heavily involved in taking the Ukrainian towns of Soledar and Bakhmut.
As the regular Russian army campaign was bogged down by setbacks and disorganization, Wagner fighters appeared to be the only ones capable of delivering tangible progress for the Russian side.
Known for its disregard for the lives of its own soldiers, Wagner’s brutal and often lawless tactics are believed to have resulted in high numbers of casualties, as new recruits are sent into battle with little formal training – a process described by retired United States Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling as “like feeding meat to a meat grinder.”
Prigozhin has used social media to lobby for what he wants and often cast himself as competent and ruthless in contrast to the Kremlin’s military establishment.
In recent months, Prigozhin has created a dilemma for Putin by becoming an outspoken critic of Russia’s military leaders.
In one particularly grim video from early May, Prigozhin stood next to a pile of dead Wagner fighters and took aim specifically at Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the Russian armed forces Gen. Valery Gerasimov.
“The blood is still fresh,” he says, pointing to the bodies behind him. “They came here as volunteers and are dying so you can sit like fat cats in your luxury offices.”
After complaining for well over a month of receiving insufficient support from the Kremlin in the grueling fight for the eastern city of Bakhmut, he announced in May that his troops would withdraw.
Now, Prigozhin has launched an all-out rebellion against the Kremlin – after his increasingly outrageous outbursts sparked speculation that he could be going too far.
The Wagner mutiny began when Prigozhin unleashed a new tirade against the Russian military on Friday and then marched his troops into the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
Staring down a sudden and staggering escalation of internal tensions that have simmered for months, Putin called Wagner’s actions “treason.”
“It is a stab in the back of our country and our people,” the president said in an address to the nation on Saturday.
Prigozhin responded on Telegram saying that Putin was “deeply mistaken.”
“We are patriots of our Motherland, we fought and are fighting,” the Wagner chief said in audio messages.
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What is the Wagner group, and who is Yevgeny Prigozhin? What to know about the Russian private military company
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For years it was shrouded in secrecy, then infamy. Now, as an apparent power struggle brings confusion and claims of an insurrection in Russia, questions about the notorious Wagner group and the intentions of its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin are swirling.
The group has been a key piece of Russia’s strategy in Ukraine, with Wagner forces being used to hold cities like Bakhmut. Prigozhin has sharply criticized Russian military leadership for weeks, calling top brass incompetent, even traitorous. He has also refused to sign a contract to cooperate with the Russian Defense Ministry.
Tensions between Russia’s defense ministry and Wagner escalated dramatically Friday when Prigozhin alleged that Russian forces had attacked Wagner field camps in eastern Ukraine. Late Friday, Prigozhin issued video taped remarks that appeared to call for a rebellion against Russian military leadership, but he was characteristically vague in defining his plans.
Prigozhin Press Service via AP, File
Prigozhin said early Saturday that Wagner forces had left Ukraine for Russia and had reached the city of Rostov-on-Don, which is home to the Russian military headquarters for the southern region and oversees the fighting in Ukraine. In an intelligence meeting, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Prigozhin’s forces appeared to control the military headquarters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the uprising “a stab in the back” in a televised address Saturday morning.
“All those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable punishment,” Putin said. “The armed forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders.”
What is the Wagner group?
The Wagner group is a group of entities that operate as a private military company, or PMC. These PMCs can be hired by governments for security or combat services.
They aren’t uncommon: The United States has used private military companies during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, there are differences between the commonly accepted definition of a PMC and Russia’s version of the companies.
“In NATO countries, in Western countries, the main logic behind using private contractors when it comes to security and defense policy has been the flexibility of resources,” said Dr. András Rácz, a Russian expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “However, on the Russian side, the logic has been different. Russia, from the beginning, perceived these companies as a way of exerting state power in a covert way.”
Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin?
Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo/AP
As Wagner’s publicity has grown, so has that of its shadowy founder, Prigozhin. His work running a catering company with Kremlin contracts earned him the nickname “Putin’s chef,” but Prigozhin long denied any connection to the group before finally admitting to being its founder last year.
“Prigozhin is a mastermind of media and also is the mastermind of social media,” said Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a public policy research based in Washington, D.C. “While Putin and his propagandists have been dominating the Russian television and traditional outlets, Prigozhin is innovative because he had weaponized a network of military correspondents, military correspondents and bloggers.”
Prigozhin has criticized Russian military commanders as the country failed to make significant gains in Ukraine. Meanwhile, he has positioned himself as a hero.
“He knows that his key differentiator from the Kremlin propaganda is that level of criticism, level of honesty, you know, that things are not really going as well, and criticism sells,” Stepanenko said. “And I think that that’s the platform that he’s really trying to advance on and solidify himself as a prominent figure in Russia.”
Where else has the Wagner group operated?
Wagner first popped up in Ukraine in 2014, when soldiers in unmarked uniforms appeared to help pro-Russian forces illegally annex territory for Russia.
In addition to deploying Wagner troops to Ukraine, the Wagner group has been active in Africa, where some nations are turning to Wagner to fill security gaps or prop up dictatorial regimes.
“In most cases, they provide training for local military forces, local security forces, but they are also engaged in VIP protection, also in guarding. And if necessary, they are able to conduct also high intensity operations, I mean real combat,” said Rácz.
In some countries, like the Central African Republic, Wagner exchanges services for almost unfettered access to natural resources. A CBS News investigation found that Russian cargo flights stopped in the country twice a week, possibly smuggling billions of dollars’ worth of gold back to Russia.
In 2022, the private army became a major part of Russia’s invasion, even recruiting fighters from Russian prisons and promising them pardons to beef up numbers on the battlefield. In February, Prigozhin said that practice would be stopped.
How does the Wagner group act?
As the operations of the once-shadowy group have become more public, so have their tactics.
Wagner mercenaries have been accused of atrocities, including mass murder and rape, across Africa and alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.
In Ukraine, fighters have been charged with thousands of war crimes. When previously asked for comment, the Wagner group dismissed questions from CBS News as boorish and provocative, and insisted the company did not commit these crimes.
In addition to their actions on the battlefield, military experts say Wagner recruits have been poorly equipped or even used as cannon fodder. U.S. officials estimate that about 30,000 Wagner fighters have been killed so far in Ukraine, all while Russia’s advance has stalled or been pushed back, raising questions about the future of the group, and its leader, Prigozhin.
Experts said it’s possible the group could be replaced by Putin.
“I think that Wagner, insofar as it’s been useful in Ukraine, could certainly be replaced by others. Where you start to have much more of an issue in replacing Wagner and in replacing Prigozhin is in a place like sub-Saharan Africa,” said Catrina Doxsee, an associate director and associate fellow for the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“As the U.S. and other Western countries, including in Europe, try to dislodge Russia’s influence and try to make the argument against Wagner, there really needs to be this conversation about viable alternatives,” for countries in the developing world to meet their security and development needs..
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Putin vows to punish ‘armed uprising’ by Wagner militia as Russia is plunged into crisis | CNN
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CNN
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Vladimir Putin is facing the greatest threat to his authority in two decades after the head of the Wagner paramilitary group launched an apparent insurrection, claimed control of military facilities in two Russian cities, and warned that his troops would head for Moscow.
Staring down a sudden and staggering escalation of internal tensions that have simmered for months, the Russian president said on Saturday that those on “path of treason” or armed rebellion would be punished.
“It is a stab in the back of our country and our people,” he said in an address to the nation, threatening a harsh response for those planning “an armed rebellion.”
Putin was speaking after the militia chief and his one-time ally Yevgeny Prigozhin dramatically stepped up his feud with Moscow’s security establishment over the handling of the invasion of Ukraine, throwing the country into crisis with a series of military moves that seemingly took Moscow by surprise.
After Putin’s speech, Prigozhin said on Telegram that the president was “deeply mistaken.”
“We are patriots of our Motherland, we fought and are fighting,” he said in audio messages. “And no one is going to turn themselves in at the request of the president, the FSB or anyone else.”
Prigozhin, who heads private military group Wagner, said his forces had taken control of Russian military facilities in the city of Rostov-on-Don, an important operations base for Russia’s war in Ukraine. He threatened to march on Moscow if defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov did not meet with him in Rostov.
The Wagner group also claimed to have seized Russian facilities in a second city, Voronezh, some 600 kilometers (372 miles) to the north of Rostov-on-Don. The governor of the Voronezh region, Alexander Gusev, said the Russian military were engaging in “combat measures” in the area.
In its daily intelligence update, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Prigozhin’s insurrection “represents the most significant challenge to the Russian state in recent times.”
The briefing said some Russian forces had “likely remained passive, acquiescing to Wagner.”
And it predicted that individual decisions to support or betray Putin could tip the balance of the showdown. “Over the coming hours, the loyalty of Russia’s security forces, and especially the Russian National Guard, will be key to how the crisis plays out,” the report said.
The developments leave Putin’s grip on power looking suddenly perilous, 16 months after he launched an invasion of Ukraine that has been beset by military setbacks, strategic failure and disorganization.
In his remarks, Putin described events in Rostov as an insurrection. “The situation in Rostov-on-Don remains difficult during the armed uprising. In Rostov, the work of civil and military administration is basically blocked,” Putin said, adding that “decisive action” would be taken.
Prigozhin has been notoriously critical of the Russian military hierarchy since the war in Ukraine started. But he had spared Putin from direct criticism, instead directing his ire towards the President’s commanders.
The private military chief seemingly built influence with with Putin over the course of the conflict, with his Wagner forces taking a leading role in the labored but ultimately successful assault on Bakhmut earlier this year. The capture of that city was a rare Russian gain in Ukraine in recent months, boosting Prigozhin’s profile further.
But his rhetoric on Friday and Saturday indicated that Prigozhin had turned not merely against the military leadership’s handling of the invasion of Ukraine, but also on the longtime Russian leader.
On Friday, he said Moscow invaded Ukraine under false pretenses devised by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and that Russia is actually losing ground on the battlefield. That was a significant change from his previous criticism. In the past, he defended the reasoning for the war but was critical of how it was being done by the defense minister, Shoigu.
“When we were told that we were at war with Ukraine, we went and fought. But it turned out that ammunition, weapons, all the money that was allocated is also being stolen, and the bureaucrats are sitting [idly], saving it for themselves, just for the occasion that happened today, when someone [is] marching to Moscow,” Prigozhin said in his Saturday Telegram messages.
This dramatic escalation came after Prigozhin accused Russian forces of striking a Wagner military camp and killing “a huge amount” of his fighters – a claim Russia’s Ministry of Defense has denied and called an “informational provocation.”
The militia chief, whose forces have played a key role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, warned of retribution in a series of Telegram messages Friday and Saturday, where he announced his forces were moving into the Rostov region neighboring Russian-occupied Ukraine, ready to “destroy everything” in their way.
“There are 25,000 of us and we are going to find out why there is such chaos in the country. There are 25,000 of us waiting as a tactical reserve and a strategic reserve. It’s the whole army and the whole country, everyone who wants to, join us. We must end this debacle,” hte said, in a radical escalation of a longstanding feud with Russia’s military leaders.
Russia’s domestic intelligence service, Federal Security Service (FSB), responded on Friday, urging Wagner fighters to detain their leader and opening a criminal case against the militia boss accusing him of “calling for an armed rebellion.” Authorities in the capital Moscow, meanwhile, tightened its security measures.
Many officials quickly rallied to Putin’s side. Russian intelligence official, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseev, posted a video about Prigozhin’s actions that day, describing it as a coup attempt.
“Only the president has the right to appoint the top leadership of the armed forces, and you are trying to encroach on his authority. This is a coup d’etat. There is no need to do this now, because there is no greater damage to the image of Russia and to its armed forces,” he added.
Prigozhin denied his acts were a coup, saying instead they were a “march of justice” that would “not interfere with the troops in any way.”
Another key figure, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov spoke of a “vile betrayal” by Prigozhin on Telegram. “The rebellion must be crushed, and if this requires harsh measures, then we are ready!” he said.
But in Ukraine, authorities watched one of the most significant developments since the war began with intrigue and defiance. “The internal Russian confrontation… is a sign of the collapse of the Putin regime,” said Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine.
He said the events are “a direct consequence of the Putin regime’s criminal military aggression against Ukraine.”
Russia’s Ministry of Defense appealed to Wagner forces on Saturday to “safely return to their points of permanent deployment.”
“You were tricked into Prigozhin’s criminal adventure and participation in an armed rebellion,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said in their official Telegram Channel.
Russian security forces cordoned off Wagner’s headquarters in St. Petersburg on Saturday, as the state mobilized in response to Wagner’s moves.
The Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee also announced the introduction of a counter-terrorist operation regime in Moscow, the Moscow region and Voronezh region.
The counter-terrorist regime includes but is not limited to document checks, strengthened protection of public order, monitoring telephone conversations and restricting communications, restricting the movement of vehicles and pedestrians on the streets.
Moscow officials said in a statement that entry and exit to the city are not being restricted, but said there “there may be difficulties with the movement of traffic.”
Social media posts showed military vehicles were seen driving around the main streets of the Russian capital in the early hours of Saturday.
Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communication regulator, said the government may restrict the internet in areas of the “counter-terrorist operation,” according to Russian state media agency TASS.
Prigozhin has asserted that his forces would receive wide backing from Russian soldiers, claiming they were given a hero’s welcome when they entered the Rostov region and that by Saturday morning 60 to 70 had already joined up with his fighters.
“The border guards came out to meet and hugged our fighters,” he claimed.
Military activity became obvious in Rostov-on-don Saturday morning, when images began emerging on social media of military vehicles going through the streets and helicopters flying overhead, though it was not clear whose control they were in.
Rostov region Governor Vasily Golubev earlier Saturday asked residents to stay calm and not leave their homes in a Telegram post. The Rostov region is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from Moscow. Its capital Rostov-on-Don has a population of around 1 million.
In the first suggestion of open armed conflict between the two sides Saturday morning, Prigozhin on Saturday said his units were hit by a helicopter on a highway. It’s unclear exactly where the units were.
“The Wagner units are intact, the helicopter is destroyed and is burning in the forest,” Prigozhin said, adding “we will take it as a threat and destroy everything around us.”
He also claimed a second helicopter was downed after it attacked civilians. CNN has been unable to verify any of Prigozhin’s claims.
Prigozhin added the alleged Wagner take-over of military facilities in Rostov would not impede military operations, saying his men are not stopping the officers from carrying out their duties.
Wagner has played a prominent role in the Ukraine war, and Prigozhin, so far, has faced few consequences for his public feud with Russia’s military leadership.
Prigozhin and Wagner have played an unusual and informal role in Putin’s Russia. He has known the president since the 1990s; both are from St. Petersburg. Prigozhin won valuable contracts as the Kremlin’s caterer and later set up the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency, whose mission was to interfere in the US 2016 election.
The fallout from his comments also inspired a wave of schadenfreude in Ukraine.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukraine’s presidential office on Saturday described the actions as exposing a deeper schism within the Russian establishment.
“The split between the elites is too obvious. Agreeing and pretending that everything is settled won’t work,” Myhailo Podolyak tweeted. “Someone must definitely lose: either Prigozhin (with a fatal ending), or the collective ‘anti-Prygozhin.’”
“Everything is just beginning in Russia,” he added.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, added on Saturday that “Ukraine has become a few steps closer to complete Victory over Russia and complete return of its territories, including Crimea.” He called Prigozhin a “vile, but useful” monster, predicting that Putin’s hold on power “will crumble like a house of cards.”
The impact of the events on the war in Ukraine remain murky, but it is difficult to see how Russia could emerge from the drama strengthened on the battlefield. Wagner’s forces have become essential to Russia’s war effort, and the possible redirection of Wagner troops toward the internal conflict would drastically weaken their ground campaign.
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Wagner Leader Prigozhin Says His Forces Have Entered Russian City Of Rostov
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The owner of the Wagner private military contractor Yevgeny Prigozhin said Saturday that his forces have driven into the Russian city of Rostov facing no resistance.
Prigozhin said that Wagner field camps were struck by rockets, helicopter gunships and artillery fire on orders from the chief of the military’s General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. He charged that Gerasimov issued the order after a meeting with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, at which they decided to destroy Wagner.
He said Wagner troops were greeted by border guards as they moved into the Rostov region and are now driving into the city of Rostov. He said young conscripts at checkpoints stood back and offered no resistance, adding that his forces “aren’t fighting against children.”
“But we will destroy anyone who stands in our way,” he said. “We are moving forward and will go until the end.”
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
The owner of the Wagner private military contractor escalated his direct challenge to the Kremlin on Friday, calling for an armed rebellion aimed at ousting Russia’s defense minister. The security services reacted immediately by opening a criminal investigation into Yevgeny Prigozhin and calling for his arrest.
Prigozhin posted a series of angry video and audio recordings in which he accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of ordering a rocket strike Friday on Wagner’s field camps in Ukraine, where his troops are fighting on behalf of Russia.
Prigozhin said his troops would now punish Shoigu in an armed rebellion and urged the army not to offer resistance.
“This is not a military coup, but a march of justice,” Prigozhin declared.
The National Anti-Terrorism Committee, which is part of the Federal Security Services, or FSB, said he would be investigated on charges of calling for an armed rebellion. The FSB urged Wagner’s contract soldiers to arrest Prigozhin and refuse to follow his “criminal and treacherous orders.” It called his statements a “stab in the back to Russian troops” and said they amounted to fomenting an armed conflict in Russia.
Prigozhin has often been with his troops near the frontline in Ukraine, but his whereabouts on Friday were unclear.
In a sign of how seriously the Kremlin was taking the threat, riot police and the National Guard have been scrambled to tighten security at key facilities in Moscow, including government agencies and transport infrastructure, the state news agency Tass reported.
Russia’s chief prosecutor said the criminal investigation was justified and that an armed rebellion charge carries a penalty of up to 20 years imprisonment.
President Vladimir Putin has been informed about the situation and “all the necessary measures were being taken, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Wagner’s forces have played a crucial role in Russia’s war in Ukraine, succeeding in taking the city where the bloodiest and longest battles have taken place, Bakhmut. Prigozhin has frequently criticized Russia’s military brass, accusing it of incompetence and of starving his troops of weapons and ammunition, but his accusations and calls for armed rebellion Friday were more direct challenge.
The Russian Defense Ministry required all military contractors to sign contracts with it before July 1, but Prigozhin, whose feud with the Defense Ministry dates back years, refused to comply. In a statement issued late Friday, he said he was ready to find a compromise with the Defense Ministry, but “they have treacherously cheated us.”
“Today they carried out a rocket strike on our rear camps, and a huge number of our comrades got killed,” he said. The Defense Ministry denied attacking the Wagner camps.
Prigozhin claimed that Shoigu went to the Russian military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don personally to direct the strike on Wagner and then “cowardly” fled.
“This scum will be stopped,” he said, in a reference to Shoigu.
“The evil embodied by the country’s military leadership must be stopped,” he shouted, urging the army not to offer any resistance to Wagner as it moves to “restore justice.”
Security also was heightened in Rostov-on-Don, Tass reported. Its correspondent said military and law enforcement personnel were seen on the streets, with at least one armored personnel carrier and aerial patrols.
Col. Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of the Russian group of forces fighting in Ukraine, urged the Wagner forces to stop any move against the army, saying it would play into the hands of Russia’s enemies, who are “waiting to see the exacerbation of our domestic political situation.”
Another top military officer, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alexeyev, denounced Prigozhin’s move as “madness” and threatened to unleash a civil war in Russia.
“It’s a stab in the back to the country and the president,” he said. “It’s impossible to imagine a stronger blow to the image of Russia and its armed forces. Such a provocation could only be staged by enemies of Russia.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the Ukrainian military was concentrating troops to launch an attack around Bakhmut to take advantage of “Prigozhin’s provocation.” It said Russian artillery and warplanes were firing on Ukrainian forces as they prepared to start an offensive in the area.
In other developments in the Ukraine, war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on other countries to heed warnings that Russia may be planning to attack an occupied nuclear power plant to cause a radiation disaster.
Members of his government briefed international representatives on the possible threat to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, whose six reactors have been shut down for months. Zelenskyy said he expected other nations to “give appropriate signals and exert pressure” on Moscow.
The Kremlin’s spokesman has denied the threat to the plant is coming from Russian forces.
The potential for a life-threatening release of radiation has been a concern since Russian troops invaded Ukraine last year and seized the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station. The head of the U.N.’s atomic energy agency spent months trying to negotiate the establishment of a safety perimeter to protect the facility as nearby areas came under repeated shelling, but he has been unsuccessful.
The International Atomic Energy Agency noted Thursday that “the military situation has become increasingly tense” while a Ukrainian counteroffensive that got underway this month unfolds in Zaporizhzhia province, where the namesake plant is located, and in an adjacent part of Donetsk province.
Although the last of the plant’s six reactors was shut down last fall to reduce the risk of a meltdown, experts have warned that a radiation release could still happen if the system that keeps the reactors’ cores and spent nuclear fuel cool loses power or water.
During months of fighting, Russia and Ukraine have traded blame over which side was increasing the threat to the plant. On Friday, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi met with the head of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom in the Kaliningrad exclave of Russia to discuss the conditions at the plant. Rosatom director Alexey Likachev and other officials “emphasized that they now expect specific steps” from the U.N. agency to prevent Ukrainian attacks on the plant and its adjacent territory, said a statement from the Russian corporation, whose divisions build and operate nuclear power plants.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian officials accused Russia of mining the plant’s cooling system, already under threat from a dam collapse earlier this week that drew down water in a reservoir that the power station uses.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Friday that Russia has beefed up its defense forces in southern Ukraine in response to the early counteroffensive and intensified its efforts to take more ground in the east. Asked if the Ukrainian military’s initial attacks set the stage for a larger assault, Maliar told Ukrainian television: “We are yet to see the main events, and the main blow. And indeed, a part of reserves will be used later.”
Ukrainian forces so far have made only incremental gains in Zaporizhzhia province, one of four regions that Putin illegally annexed last year. Putin has pledged to defend the regions as Russian territory.
Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine is fighting to force Russian troops out of those regions, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014 and is using as a staging and supply route in the 16-month-old war. If the counteroffensive breaks the Russian defenses in the south, Ukrainian forces could attempt to reach a pair of occupied port cities on the Sea of Azov and break Russia’s land bridge to Crimea.
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Wagner rebels career toward showdown with Putin as they push to Moscow
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Mercenaries from the Wagner Group of embittered warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin — some of them speeding along a highway to Moscow — on Saturday looked set for imminent clashes with troops loyal to President Vladimir Putin, who warned the rebellion risked pushing Russia into a civil war.
Furious over the Kremlin’s bungled invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin seized key strategic footholds in southern Russian on Saturday — most significantly the major city of Rostov-on-Don — while an unclear number of his forces were making a dash up the main highway to the capital. Russian government forces also appeared to shell the southern city of Voronezh on Saturday in an attempt to combat the Wagner insurrection, which is snowballing into one of the gravest threats to Putin’s 25-year rule.
It is far from clear how close Wagner’s troops are to Moscow but the governor of Lipetsk, some 400 kilometers south of the capital, has reported the mercenary convoy passing through, and authorities there said they were carving ditches in the road with diggers to slow Prigozhin’s men. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin warned “a counter-terrorist operation has been declared in Moscow. The situation is complicated,” and added that Monday would not be a regular working day, telling people to avoid traveling round the city.
Footage posted online of the roadblocks supposed to slow Wagner looked hastily improvized, with a light military presence, mainly composed of civilian vehicles. Jay Truesdale, a former American diplomat who served in both Russia and Ukraine, said Moscow was ill-equipped to cope with a major insurgency. “I’m not surprised Russia hasn’t been able to deal with the growing threat because the best members of its armed forces are deployed, or have been killed,” he told POLITICO.
In a sign that fears of full-blown internal conflict are not far-fetched, Chechen strongman and Putin loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov vowed to throw his fighters behind the president and take on Prigozhin’s renegade troops in Rostov. “The rebellion must be crushed, and if this requires harsh measures, then we are ready!” he said.
Images of shelling in Voronezh, some 500 kilometers south of Moscow, could not immediately be verified, but the governor, Alexander Gusev, confirmed fighting there. “The Russian armed forces are carrying out required operational and combat measures on the territory of the Voronezh Region as part of a counter-terror operation,” he said.
Early on Saturday, Prigozhin claimed to have taken control of Rostov — a crucial command center for the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, with a population of more than 1 million — without a fight. In response, Putin lashed out at Prigozhin’s “treason” and vowed to “neutralize” the threat posed by his renegade mercenary army.
In a five-and-a-half-minute address to the nation, the president denounced this mutiny as “a stab in the back of our nation and our people.” Without naming Prigozhin, he said: “We are dealing with treason.”
The Russian president said the insurrection was “exactly the kind of blow that was dealt to Russia in 1917, when the country fought the First World War, but victory was stolen from her. Intrigues, squabbles, politicking behind the backs of the army and the people turned into the greatest shock: the destruction of the army and the collapse of the state, the loss of vast territories. In the end — the tragedy of the civil war.”
The insurrection dramatically escalates the stakes in Moscow’s 16-month-old war on Ukraine, and creates a significant headache for Putin, just as Ukrainian forces are looking for opportunities to push through Russian defensive lines in a long-awaited counteroffensive.
Most significant challenge
Britain’s ministry of defense also cast Prigozhin’s mutiny “as the most significant challenge to the Russian state in recent times.”
In a new audio message released by Prigozhin on Saturday, he insisted his men had Russia’s best interests at heart. “When it comes to accusations of betrayal, the president is deeply mistaken. We are patriots … None of us will turn ourselves in because we don’t want to live a life of corruption, deceit and bureaucracy,” he said. “We are patriots and those who oppose us today are on the side of the scum.”
In a statement on Saturday morning, the U.K. government indicated Prigozhin’s forces were moving through territory around Voronezh, roughly 500 kilometers south of Moscow and around 500 kilometers north of Rostov “almost certainly aiming to get to Moscow.” Russian authorities said they had closed the main highway running from Moscow to the south in a bid to block any advances by Prigozhin’s mutineers.
In both Voronezh and Rostov, the authorities have called on people to stay at home, while Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, called on Russians to pray for Putin.
“With very limited evidence of fighting between Wagner and Russian security forces, some have likely remained passive, acquiescing to Wagner,” the statement by the U.K. defense ministry said. “Over the coming hours, the loyalty of Russia’s security forces, and especially the Russian National Guard, will be key to how the crisis plays out.”
Admitting the situation remains “difficult” in Rostov, a palpably angry Putin called on Wagner’s forces to desert their commander. “I call on those who are being dragged into this crime not to make the fatal and tragic, inimitable mistake, to make the only right choice — to stop participating in criminal actions,” he said.
Putin’s chef
Nicknamed “Putin’s chef” — because he came to prominence by running catering services for the Russian government — Prigozhin has become one of the most prominent faces of Russia’s war against Ukraine, but has become an increasingly virulent critic of Moscow’s military command, which he repeatedly accuses of incompetence and of providing insufficient resources to his frontline troops. A notoriously brutal and unpredictable figure, Prigozhin has drawn many of his forces from jails.
Overnight, Prigozhin said in a series of short voice messages posted to social media that he was leading a “march of justice” and not a military coup, and suggested that 25,000 of his men were en route to Moscow to oust Russia’s military leadership — and were ready to die for the cause.
“We are at the staff headquarters, it’s 7:30 in the morning,” Prigozhin said in a video statement posted in his Telegram channel. “Military objects in Rostov are under control, including the aerodrome.”
According to reports and social media, Wagner forces met little resistance as they traveled the short distance from the Ukrainian border to the city, the operational center for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The thrust transformed Prigozhin’s increasingly furious tirades of the past 24 hours against the Kremlin into stark action that exposed the vulnerability of the Russian rear.
“The chief of staff ran away as soon as he found out that we were approaching the building,” said Prigozhin, referring to Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, who was reported to have been in the area recently.
Prigozhin said the staff headquarters in Rostov was working normally. “Everything we did and took control over was so that offensive aviation does not strike us, but strikes the Ukrainians,” he said. The 1:43-minute video statement was shot in the corner of a rain-soaked courtyard as armed troops milled around in the background.
The big question now is how much support Prigozhin could possibly command. Wagner’s recruitment posters were already being taken down in several cities. Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, tweeted Prigozhin was unlikely to win support among Russia’s key power players.
“The indifference of the man of the masses on which Putin’s regime rests will not turn against him. But an indifferent person will not defend him either. Much depends on the loyalty of the siloviki and the elites in general. But they don’t like Prigozhin, he’s dangerous to them.”
Prigozhin takes control
Meanwhile, an unverified video purported to show Prigozhin taking control of military installations in Rostov, where he held tense talks with Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov. The Wagner chief appeared to threaten to blockade the city and march on Moscow if his demands were not met.
According to military bloggers and to Prigozhin himself, Wagner troops had overnight shot down one Russian Mi-35 helicopter. Videos posted on social media overnight had shown choppers hovering over Rostov.
Prominent Russian pro-war blogger Igor Girkin also posted clips showing long columns of military vehicles, which he said belonged to Wagner forces, snaking through the Voronezh region.
Appealing directly to the Russian army and people, Prigozhin said the Kremlin had lied to them over the toll of the war. A huge amount of territory has been lost, he said. Three to four times as many men were being killed than was reported to the top; and losses — killed, missing, wounded and unable to fight due to a lack of ammunition or leadership — reached 1,000 on some days, he said.
Russia’s FSB spy service has opened a criminal investigation for organizing an armed insurrection, and according to state media, counterterrorism operations have been launched in Moscow, the surrounding region and Voronezh oblast, which lies around halfway along the 1,100-kilometer road from Rostov to the Russian capital.
This story is developing.
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Douglas Busvine , Gabriel Gavin and Zoya Sheftalovich
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West after Wagner rebellion: Talk softly and help Ukraine carry a bigger stick
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As the United States and its European allies work to make sense of last weekend’s chaos in the Kremlin, they’re urging Kyiv to seize a “window” of opportunity that could help its counteroffensive push through Russian positions.
The forming response: Transatlantic allies are hoping, largely by keeping silent, to de-escalate the immediate political crisis while quietly pushing Ukraine to strike a devastating blow against Russia on the battlefield. It’s best to hit an enemy while it’s down, and Kyiv would be hard-pressed to find a more wounded Russia, militarily and politically, than it is right now.
In public, American and European leaders stressed that they are preparing for any outcome, as it still remained unclear where the mercenary rebellion would ultimately lead. Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led the revolt, resurfaced on Monday, claiming he had merely wanted to protest, not topple the Russian government — while simultaneously insisting his paramilitary force would remain operational.
“It’s still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about where this is going,” U.S. President Joe Biden said Monday afternoon. “The overall outcome of this remains to be seen.”
For the moment, European officials see no greater threat to the Continent even as they watch for signs that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two-decade hold on power might be slipping.
Western allies attribute the relative calm to how they managed Prigozhin’s 24-hour tantrum.
During the fighting, senior Biden administration figures and their European counterparts agreed on calls that they should remain “silent” and “neutral” about the mutiny, said three U.S. and European officials, who like others were granted anonymity to discuss fast-moving and sensitive deliberations.
In Monday’s meeting of top EU diplomats in Luxembourg, officials from multiple countries acted with a little-to-see-here attitude. No one wanted to give the Kremlin an opening to claim Washington and its friends were behind the Wagner Group’s targeting of senior Russian military officials.
“We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” Biden said from the White House Monday, relaying the transatlantic message. However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signaled on Monday that his regime would still look into the potential involvement of Western spies in the rebellion.
The broader question is how, or even if, the unprecedented moment could reverse Ukraine’s fortunes as its counteroffensive stalls.
The U.S. and some European nations have urged Ukraine for weeks to move faster and harder on the front lines. The criticism is that Kyiv has acted too cautiously, waiting for perfect weather conditions and other factors to align before striking Russia’s dug-in fortifications.
Now, with Moscow’s political and military weaknesses laid bare, there’s a “window” for Ukraine to push through the first defensive positions, a U.S. official said. Others in the U.S. and Europe assess that Russian troops might lay down their arms if Ukraine gets the upper hand while command and control problems from the Kremlin persist.
British Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace | Sean Gallup/Getty Images “Russia does not appear to have the uncommitted ground forces needed to counter the multiple threats it is now facing from Ukraine, which extend over 200 kilometers [124 miles] from Bakhmut to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River,” U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said in the House of Commons Monday.
Ukrainian officials say there’s no purposeful delay on their part. Russia’s air power, minefields and bad weather have impeded Kyiv’s advances, they insist, conceding that they do wish they could move faster.
“We’re still moving forward in different parts of the front line,” Yuri Sak, an adviser to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, said in an interview.
“Earlier it was not possible to assess the solidity of the Russian defenses,” Sak added. “Only now that we are doing active probing operations, we get a better picture. The obtained information will be factored into the next stages of our offensive operations.”
Analysts have long warned that, despite the training Ukrainian forces have received from Western militaries, it was unlikely that they would fight just like a NATO force. Kyiv is still operating with a strategy of attrition despite recent drills on combined-arms operations, maneuver warfare and longer-range precision fires.
During Monday’s gathering of top EU diplomats, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said now was the time to pump more artillery systems and missiles into Kyiv’s arsenal, place more sanctions on Russia and speed up the training of Ukrainian pilots on advanced fighter jets.
“Together, all these steps will allow the liberation of all Ukrainian territories,” he asserted.
In the meantime, European officials will keep an eye on Russia as they consider NATO’s own security.
“I think that nobody has yet understood what is going on in Russia — frankly I have a feeling also that the leadership in Moscow has no clue what is going on in their own country,” quipped Latvia’s Foreign Minister and President-elect Edgars Rinkēvičs in a phone interview on Monday afternoon.
“We are prepared, as we always would be, for a range of scenarios,” U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters Monday.
NATO allies will continue to watch for whether Russia starts to crumble or if the autocrat atop the Kremlin can hold his nation together with spit and tape.
“The question is how Putin will now react to his public humiliation. His reaction — to save his face and reestablish his authority — may well be a further crackdown on any domestic dissent and an intensified war effort in Ukraine,” said a Central European defense official. The official added that there’s no belief Putin will reach for a nuclear option during the greatest threat to his rule in two decades.
In the meantime, an Eastern European senior diplomat said, “we will increase monitoring, possibly our national vigilance and intelligence efforts. Additional border protection measures might be feasible. We need more allied forces in place.”
Alexander Ward reported from Washington. Lili Bayer reported from Brussels. Suzanne Lynch reported from Luxembourg. Cristina Gallardo reported from London.
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Kremlin says Prigozhin will depart for Belarus after his rebellion fizzles
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Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced a deal late on Saturday that Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin would depart for Belarus in return for being spared prosecution, after an abortive rebellion in which his troops made a dash for Moscow.
The announcement, carried by the Tass news agency, came shortly after embittered warlord Prigozhin announced his men were turning back from Moscow to avoid a devastating civil conflict. In a voice recording posted to his Telegram channel, Prigozhin said his troops would turn back after advancing within 200 kilometers of the capital.
It was the culmination of an extraordinary day, in which Putin had accused the Wagner group of “treason” and said their uprising risked tipping Russia into civil war.
Prigozhin, smarting over the Kremlin’s handling of the war in Ukraine, announced early on Saturday that his mercenaries had seized the major southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, a logistics hub for Putin’s war, and threatened to push on to Moscow. Wagner forces also appeared to be well established in the city of Voronezh, 500 kilometers south of the capital.
After a day of heightened military tensions — with shells fired in Voronezh and Chechen fighters being dispatched to take on Wagner in Rostov — the uprising suddenly fizzled out in the evening. Ultimately, Moscow appeared an improbably ambitious target for Prigozhin and Russian regular forces appeared unable to do much to counter Prigozhin in the south.
Prigozhin said he was pulling back from the capital to avoid a bloodbath.
“During this time we did not spill a single drop of blood of our fighters,” he said. “Taking responsibility for the fact that Russian blood will be shed — on one side — we will turn our columns around and go in the opposite direction to field camps, according to the plan,” he said.
As Wagner advanced over the course of the day, Moscow’s mayor had declared a “counter terrorism operation” and mechanical diggers carved ditches in the main highway running from the south into the capital to halt Prigozhin’s men. Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, exhorted Russians to pray for Putin.
It was unclear what Prigozhin meant by returning his men to camps, and whether Wagner intended to hold its southern positions in Rostov and Voronezh. Tellingly, the governor of Rostov region, Vasily Golubev, said the jury was still out on Prigozhin’s pledge to withdraw his troops. “We suggest we wait for actions and comment on them, not words.” Later in the evening, social media footage appeared to show Wagner pulling out from Rostov, to chants of support from local people.
Moments before Prigozhin’s volte-face, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko issued a statement claiming he held talks throughout the day with the outspoken oligarch — a former caterer nicknamed “Putin’s chef” because of his contracts to supply food and drink to the Kremlin.
“As a result, they came to agreements on the inadmissibility of unleashing a bloody massacre on the territory of Russia,” the message from Lukashenko’s office read.
“Yevgeny Prigozhin accepted the proposal of the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, to stop the movement of armed personnel of the Wagner company inside Russia, and take additional steps to de-escalate tensions.”
“At the moment there is an completely constructive and acceptable option of resolving the situation, with security guarantees for the Wagner PMC fighters on the table,” the press release claimed. If there are such guarantees, they will be a bitter pill for Putin, who promised to punish the rebels.
Given Peskov’s statement that Prigozhin will depart for Belarus, it now seems the Wagner commander has failed to to secure his core demands.
He has fulminated against incompetence and corruption in Russia’s high command for months and has accused Moscow of not giving him the support and equipment he requires. The biggest win for Prigozhin would have been Putin agreeing to remove Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu or Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov — both hate figures to the mercenary boss — but such a huge concession from the Russian president was never likely.
For its part, Ukraine stressed the uprising had shown Russia was out of control.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “today, the world saw that the bosses of Russia do not control anything. Nothing at all. Complete chaos. Complete absence of any predictability.”
“The longer your troops stay on Ukrainian land, the more devastation they will bring to Russia. The longer this person is in the Kremlin, the more disasters there will be,” he added.
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Gabriel Gavin
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Putin doubles down on Ukraine war
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Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to carry on with the war in Ukraine, speaking in a pre-recorded interview that was broadcast on state television on Sunday.
The interview was taped on June 21 but broadcast after the Kremlin resolved the first attempted coup against Moscow in three decades.
“I’m focused primarily on the special military operation,” Putin said in the interview with Rossiya-1 TV, using his regime’s term for the invasion of Ukraine. “My day begins and ends with this.”
“Lately, I stay up quite late” monitoring the situation, he added. “Of course, I always have to be communicating.”
Putin’s message of being in control was broadcast after the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary force on which Moscow has depended for the war against Ukraine, attempted a lightning march on Moscow from the Russian-Ukrainian border, taking the Russian elite establishment and the world at large by surprise.
On Saturday, Putin had to rely on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to personally intervene and broker a deal with Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin to avoid bloodshed. Prigozhin agreed to move to Belarus, and Wagner troops appeared to be standing down on Sunday.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak described the Wagner coup attempt as “humiliating” for Putin.
“You almost nullified Putin,” Podolyak said in a tweet. “Prigozhin humiliated Putin [and] the state and showed that there is no longer a monopoly on violence.”
This article has been updated to show that the interview was conducted on June 21.
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Stuart Lau and Gabriel Gavin
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Prigozhin’s Wagner mutiny is over. What happens now?
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Vladimir Putin’s strongman mask is slipping — and Ukraine sees opportunity in the chaos.
Warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny over the weekend exposed Putin’s tenuous grip on the levers of power, the disunity within his ranks and the weakness in Russia’s own border defenses. The ease with which Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries were able to take control of Russian territory and march to within 200 kilometers of Moscow — and the videos of Russians cheering for them — showed Putin’s regime is far from invincible.
“Today the world saw that Russia’s bosses do not control anything,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his evening address late Saturday. “In one day, they lost several of their million-plus cities and showed all Russian bandits, mercenaries, oligarchs and anyone else how easy it is to capture Russian cities and, probably, weapons arsenals.”
Switching from Ukrainian to Russian, Zelenskyy continued in what was clearly a message to Putin’s apparatchiks: “The man from the Kremlin is obviously very afraid and is probably hiding somewhere, not showing himself. I’m sure he is no longer in Moscow … He knows what he’s afraid of because he himself created this threat. All the evil, all the losses, all the hatred — he foments it himself. The longer he can run between his bunkers, the more you will all lose, all of those who are connected with Russia.”
Putin, a fan of historic parallels, on Saturday morning invoked the specter of the Russian civil war, which broke out in 1917 as the country was fighting the First World War — an indication of how seriously he appeared to view the Prigozhin threat.
But perhaps Putin ought to look to the failed 1991 August Coup against then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Back then, Communist Party hardliners furious at Gorbachev’s attempts to ram through reforms detained the leader at his dacha in Crimea and rolled their tanks into Moscow. Like Prigozhin’s failed mutiny, the August Coup of 1991 was short-lived — it only lasted three days. But the fallout was catastrophic for the Soviet Union — it led to a loss of confidence in the Communist regime, and by December of 1991, the USSR was no more.
Wagner’s role in Putin’s war
Wagner mercenaries have played an important role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As an unofficial arm of the Kremlin’s armed forces, recruited from Russia’s prisons and alleyways, they have been among Putin’s most expendable men.
A force with a capacity for horrific savagery — including executions of deserters with sledgehammers — Prigozhin’s men were thrown into the most brutal battles — offcuts in Russia’s famous military meat-grinder.
Last winter, when Russian forces were depleted and demoralized in the wake of a surging Ukrainian counteroffensive that took back Kharkiv and Kherson, Moscow used Prigozhin’s mercenaries to plug gaps in the battlefront and give his regular troops breathing space.
As Wagner mercenaries held the line over the winter, Russia was able to replenish its dwindling arms supplies, and call up and train a fresh wave of conscripts to throw into the trenches.
Prigozhin’s forces were also instrumental in the battle for Bakhmut, the strategic town in eastern Ukraine that has seen some of the heaviest fighting and highest Russian casualties of the war.
What happens to Prigozhin’s forces now?
On Sunday, Prigozhin’s mercenaries started pulling out of Russia’s southern Voronezh region, which is situated along a highway that the Wagner Group wanted to use to march on Moscow, and from Rostov-on-Don, the Russian city close to the Ukrainian border seized by Wagner on Saturday.
The question is, where will they go now?
With Prigozhin out of the way, the Wagner mercenaries will either go back to where they came from or sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense | Stringer/AFP via Getty Images With Prigozhin out of the way (and likely avoiding all windows, doorknobs, teacups and umbrellas during his supposed exile in Belarus), the Wagner mercenaries — 25,000 of them, if Prigozhin is to be believed — will either go back to where they came from, or sign contracts with the Russian defense ministry.
Indeed, Russian military bloggers have speculated that Prigozhin launched his offensive on the country’s military leadership in response to the Kremlin seeking to defang him by integrating his mercenaries into the army. (Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu earlier this month ordered all “volunteer detachments” at the front in the Ukraine war to sign contracts with the ministry by July 1 — which Prigozhin vowed to oppose.)
But the Wagner mercenaries who do sign contracts may not make much of a difference on the battlefield now.
“Wagner bought the Russian army time over winter,” said Mick Ryan, a military strategist and retired Australian Army major general. “But with or without Wagner, it’s going to be difficult for Russia to win this war,” he added.
“As we’re seeing now, there’s a big difference in will on the two sides,” Ryan said. “The Ukrainians are absolutely dedicated to saving their country, they’re fighting for their freedom. The Russians are kind of interested in fighting Ukraine — and kind of interested in fighting each other.”
And to what extent can Putin ever trust his new recruits, who were ready to storm Moscow under Prigozhin’s command?
“Russia has just lost 25,000 soldiers,” Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, a former general of the U.S. forces in Europe, told Times Radio on Sunday, referring to the Wagner mercenaries. “Every one of them is going to be looked at with suspicion and seen as unreliable.”
Putin’s humiliation a boost for Kyiv
With the full-scale war in its 16th month and Putin’s forces deeply entrenched in Ukraine’s south and east, Kyiv has struggled to make significant gains in its counteroffensive.
But the extraordinary events on Saturday gave Ukraine’s forces a much-needed morale boost.
“For our soldiers, it was also very motivating,” Ukrainian MP Kira Rudik, from the liberal Holos party, said in an interview with Times Radio. “It is a great proof that you can fight Russia and you can win [against] Russia and it’s very good that the world has seen that.”
Kyiv’s forces have been hitting Russian positions in the south and the east of Ukraine, looking for a way to push through the Kremlin’s line, like they did last year.
Prigozhin’s antics have forced the Kremlin to shore up control of Russian territory rather than direct the entire might of its armed forces at Ukraine. That provides an opening for Kyiv — if it can get the gear it says it needs to push through Russia’s positions.
A person holds a Wagner Group flag in Rostov-on-Don | Roman Romokhov/AFP via Getty Images Zelenskyy, in his Saturday address, renewed his call for the West to supply Ukraine with more weapons, to enable the country to take advantage of Putin’s moment of weakness. “Now is the time to provide all the weapons necessary,” Zelenskyy said, name-checking U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets and tactical missile systems.
“If the Ukrainians are able to exploit this, particularly in the east, near Bakhmut, at the end of the day they just need one breakthrough,” said Ryan, the military strategist. “If they punch through Russian defenses and keep that penetration open, the Russians are going to be in real trouble — they are very brittle. The Ukrainians just need to do this once. And the Russians are going to be chasing their tails thereafter.”
Ominous signal for Putin
Prigozhin’s macho-man missives railing at Russia’s military leadership tapped into a general sense among his countrymen that the “special military operation” isn’t going as well as it ought to, given what they view as Ukraine’s military inferiority.
While the warlord stopped just short of directly blaming Putin for Russia’s lackluster battlefield performance, he insinuated in his barrage of posts on Telegram late Friday and early Saturday that the Russian president had at the very least been manipulated by those in his circle.
Prigozhin’s implication: That Putin is out of touch, weak, easily bamboozled — the polar opposite of the image the strong-man leader has carefully cultivated over his decades at Russia’s helm.
And Prigozhin’s attacks seem to have found a receptive audience.
The scenes in Rostov, where crowds of Russians welcomed the Wagner mercenaries with chanting and cheering, revealed the extent to which support is waning for members of Putin’s inner sanctum — particularly his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his overall commander of the war on Ukraine, General Valery Gerasimov.
Perhaps even more telling was Wagner’s superstar exit as its tanks and heavily armed forces pulled out of Rostov. The crowds applauded, whistled, waved Wagner flags, and yelled “Great job! Great job!” and “Wagner! Wagner!” — just hours after Putin labeled Prigozhin and his followers traitors.
“I think what the world has seen is that Putin is not almighty,” said Rudik, the Ukrainian MP. Referring to the deal negotiated by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko under which Prigozhin would depart for Belarus in return for being spared prosecution by Russia, she said: “I think the situation was very, very much like the Wizard of Oz, where Prigozhin looked for the great and terrible Putin and it turned out that it was just a man who was really scared and had to have a leader of another country, so-called President Lukashenko, to talk to him to get him in his senses.”
“What happened [Saturday] was not the end,” Rudik added. “It was the beginning, to show that Putin does not control the country and that he’s not invincible, and that if you have enough strength you can try and fight him. And I think for many nationalistic movements in Russia, they were waiting for the opportunity.”
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How US-made sniper ammunition ends up in Russian rifles
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As gear reviews go, it was a glowing one: In a 60-second video clip posted on Telegram, a masked sniper sporting the death’s-head insignia of the Wagner mercenary army sings the praises of the Russian-made Orsis T-5000 rifle.
“The equipment comes very well recommended,” the soldier, pictured in the charred interior of a building, tells a war reporter from the Zvezda TV channel run by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Pulling out the clip of the weapon at his side, he continues: “It uses Western .338 caliber ammunition. It works very well. It can penetrate light cover if the enemy is behind it. And, in the open, it can strike the enemy at a range of up to 1,500 meters.”
The Orsis T-5000 is made by a company based in Moscow called Promtekhnologiya that has been sanctioned by the United States.
And the “Western” ammunition?
Filings obtained by POLITICO indicate that Promtekhnologiya and another Russian firm called Tetis have acquired hundreds of thousands of rounds made by Hornady, a U.S. company that trademarks its wares as “Accurate. Deadly. Dependable.” Hornady, founded in 1949, sums up its philosophy with the phrase: “Ten bullets through one hole.”
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that supplies of lethal and nonlethal military equipment are still reaching Russia despite the West’s imposition of unprecedented sanctions in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year. The exigencies of war have exposed Russia’s lack of capacity to manufacture high-end sniper rounds, say defense experts, and that is fueling a flourishing black market for Western ammunition.
Information on the procurement of such gear is hiding in plain sight: Details of deals — importers, suppliers and product descriptions — can be found online by anyone with access to the Russian internet and a grasp of international customs classification codes.
Anything but bulletproof
In a “declaration of conformity” filed with a Russian government registry and dated August 12, 2022, Promtekhnologiya stated that it planned to source a batch of 102,200 Hornady lead bullets for the assembly of “hunting cartridges” used in “civilian weapons with a rifled barrel.” The specifications — .338 Lapua Magnum bullets weighing 285 grains — match those of a product in the Hornady catalog.
A second declaration bearing the same date is for a batch of “uncapped cartridge cases for assembling civilian firearms cartridges” made by Hornady with the same .338 Lapua Magnum specification.
The description is misleading: The .338 Lapua Magnum isn’t a “hunting cartridge;” it’s a high-powered, long-range projectile that was developed by Western militaries in the 1980s and used by their snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reached by POLITICO, Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime.
“The instant Russia invaded Ukraine, we were done,” Hornady said in a brief telephone call.
Hornady declined at first to elaborate and, when asked to review the evidence, requested that it be sent by fax or courier as he did not use email. He eventually responded after POLITICO sent written requests for comment with supporting documentation by courier.
“We categorically are NOT exporting anything to Russia and have not had an export permit for Russia since 2014,” he replied. “We do not support any sale of our product to any Russian son-of-a-bitch and if we can find out how they acquire, if in fact they do, we will take all steps available to stop it.”
Hornady added that he had contacted the U.S. authorities following POLITICO’s inquiry. He pointed out that current U.S. law required that customers must obtain permission from the Department of Commerce to re-export articles made in the United States. “To the best of our knowledge, none of our customers violate that law,” he said.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, asked which ammunition his troops used, told POLITICO they had “a huge amount of NATO-issue ammunition left over from the Ukrainian army.” In a sarcastic voice message sent to a POLITICO journalist, the Russian warlord also asked for help procuring F-35 combat jets and U.S.-made sniper rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers.
Promtekhnologiya denied filing any customs declarations to import ammunition; said it had no relationship with Hornady; and that it had the capacity to manufacture its own ammunition. The company also said in emailed comments to POLITICO that the Orsis rifle and the ammunition the company makes are intended for “hunting and sporting” purposes and are freely available on the civilian market.
Both Promtekhnologiya and Alexander Zinovyev, listed as the company’s general director in the filings, have been sanctioned by Ukraine, which cites evidence that its Orsis rifles “have been used in Russian military operations in Eastern Ukraine.”
Promtekhnologiya is also in Washington’s sights: “We take any allegation of sanctions violation or evasion seriously and are committed to ensuring that sanctions are fully enforced,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said in response to a request for comment from POLITICO.
“We have taken steps to hold Russia accountable for its war in Ukraine and have imposed an unprecedented sanctions regime to disrupt Russia’s ability to access funds and weapons that fuel Putin’s war machine. That includes sanctioning companies like Promtekhnologiya.”
Criminal, or wilful, violations of U.S. sanctions can trigger penalties of up to $1 million per violation, as well as up to 20 years’ imprisonment for individuals. Civil penalties can run to the higher of either twice the value of the underlying transaction or around $350,000 per violation.
Describing military-grade ammunition as for hunting or sporting use, as the filings do, amounts to a thinly veiled ruse to evade targeted “smart” sanctions aimed at starving the Russian military of the means to fight the war, said defense analyst Maria Shagina.
“Strictly speaking, smart sanctions are not supposed to target anything civilian to avoid humanitarian collateral damage,” said Shagina, a research fellow at the U.K.-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. “But the targets in authoritarian countries will really exploit this.”
Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime | Leon Neal/Getty Images Russia reloaded
Another Russian buyer of Hornady ammunition is a company called Tetis, which has disclosed two shipments since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. The most recent was in April for more than 300,000 “units” comprising a wide range of products that checked out with the Hornady catalog.
The main owners of Tetis, Alexander Levandovsky and Sergey Senchenko — who each own stakes of 41.1 percent — have links to the Russian military.
Both were previously listed as shareholders in another company called Kampo, which according to company filings holds licenses to make weapons and military equipment and has done business with the Ministry of Defense and the Special Flight Detachment that operates Putin’s presidential plane.
Although Tetis doesn’t offer Hornady ammo on its website, it does advertise itself as an international distributor for RCBS, a U.S. maker of reloading equipment. This is used to assemble cases, primer, propellants and projectiles into cartridges that can then be fired — as seen in this video posted by a Russian gun enthusiast.
A database check revealed that the most recent declaration of conformity filed by Tetis for RCBS, for electronic weighing scales, predated Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24 of last year by just over a month.
Russia’s trade bureaucracy allows local firms to vouch for the goods they are importing by filing declarations of conformity, such as those that mention the Hornady products. This means that the supplier listed on the form may not be aware of specific shipments that could have been handled by an intermediary.
Tetis did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Matt Rice, a spokesman for RCBS owner Vista Outdoor, said Tetis was no longer an international distributor for RCBS. “Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our business made the decision to end all sales of goods with the country,” Rice said in an email, adding that RCBS would remove the listing for Tetis from its website.
Doing the rounds
Hornady ammunition or its components are freely available in Russia, along with other high-end foreign military gear.
Take the “Sniper Shop” on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that is popular in Russia: It features a current offer for a full range of Hornady products, with the seller inviting buyers to visit a showroom in Sokolniki, a Moscow district, and offering delivery throughout Russia by courier or post. Contacted by POLITICO, the poster confirmed the Hornady ammo was in stock but declined to comment further on how it was sourced.
Then there is “Anton,” who advertises products from Hornady and RCBS on his profile. He also touts gear from Nightforce, maker of thermal optical sights; Lapua, which helped design the eponymous .338 ammo; MDT, a maker of chassis systems, magazines and accessories for rifles; and precision gunsmith AREA 419. All are American with the exception of Lapua, which is based in Finland and owned by a Norwegian company called Nammo.
Western high-end foreign military gear seems to be freely available in Russia | Leon Neal/Getty Images “Anton” posted an offer for Hornady cartridges last October 24. Contacted via Telegram to ask whether he was still stocking Hornady, he replied: “We don’t do ammunition.”
POLITICO has, in the course of its research, also found declarations from several other Russian companies for ammunition made in Germany, Finland and Turkey.
The thriving black market reflects a structural deficit in Russia’s war economy. Its military-industrial complex can produce good small arms, like the Orsis rifle, but lacks the capacity to churn out the amount of ammunition needed by an army fighting a war across a front stretching hundreds of miles.
“Despite the quality of the rifles produced, a successful hit directly depends on the components used in the cartridges, and they, unfortunately, are imported,” a correspondent lamented in a post on a Russian military news site a few months into the war. Gunpowder produced in Russia lacks stability, the correspondent added, saying this is “unacceptable in the framework of high-precision shooting.”
The continuing access to specialized rifle cartridges made in the West, such as the .338 Lapua Magnum, by a sanctioned Russian small arms manufacturer like Orsis maker Promtekhnologiya is “egregious,” said Gary Somerville, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British defense think tank.
“At present, there is only one manufacturer of this cartridge in Russia,” he added. “Preventing the shipment of these types of ammunition from Western countries to Russia is an easy win for those seeking to constrain Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine.”
Balkan route
It’s not just ammunition from the U.S. that is reaching the battlefront around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries after a bloody, months-long battle.
There also appear to be cartridges from the European Union, which has imposed no fewer than 10 rounds of sanctions against Russia in a so-far inconclusive attempt to starve Putin’s war machine of the means to fight on.
Promtekhnologiya has filed four declarations since October covering shipments of 460,000 units described as “Orsis hunting cartridges” — most are of the .338 Lapua Magnum type. These identify a Slovenian company called Valerian as the supplier.
The first of the filings, dated October 13, 2022, includes an air waybill number whose first three digits — 262 — indicate that the shipper was Ural Airlines, a Russian carrier. It was not immediately possible to trace the route of the flight, however.
Valerian was founded on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with paid-in capital of €7,500 by Gašper Heybal, who previously worked for U.S. military outfitter Voodoo Tactical. On its home page, Valerian says: “Our goal is to equip you for your mission, whatever it might be, and wherever you are going.”
In online posts over the past decade — including on a Facebook Group called EU Guns with a declared mission of “easier transfer of weapons between European gun owners” — Heybal has done little to dispel the impression that he is an active small arms dealer.
Bakhmut was recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries, the Wagner mercenary group| Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images The telephone number Heybal shared publicly in those posts is the same as the one for Valerian, which is registered at an address in a village around 40 minutes’ drive southeast of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana.
Reached at that number, Heybal denied that Valerian had shipped ammunition to Russia: “We don’t sell any … firearms or ammunition, and also there is an embargo on Russia,” said Heybal.
In a follow-up email on the declarations of conformity, Heybal said: “Firstly, we must stress that we do not know, nor do we understand how the name of our company, Valerian d.o.o., appears on the document.”
“Secondly, Valerian is not listed there as a supplier but as the producer, and this is not possible, as we do not produce ammunition. That being said, it still makes absolutely no sense to us as to how our name could appear on it. We are glad you brought this to our attention so we can figure out what is going on.”
A Slovenian diplomat said that, while Valerian had never applied for authorization to export weapons or ammunition to Russia, it had shipped “individual parts” to Kyrgyzstan.
The Central Asian state is one of the countries that the EU has in mind as it discusses an 11th round of measures targeting third countries that are suspected of helping Russia evade sanctions.
“The competent services in the Republic of Slovenia have already initiated the appropriate procedures to investigate the facts concerning the company,” the diplomat told POLITICO, adding that they would verify the possible diversion of goods to the Russian Federation. “Slovenia is firmly committed to supporting Ukraine, we have been supportive of all sanctions packages and especially this anti-circumvention one.”
An official at the European Commission deflected a request for comment, saying the bloc’s member countries were responsible for implementing sanctions. “As this seems like a very specific case, these allegations need to be investigated further by the competent authorities,” the official said.
Sergey Panov reported from Spain, Sarah Anne Aarup from Brussels and Douglas Busvine from Berlin. Additional reporting by Steven Overly in Washington.
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Sergey Panov, Sarah Anne Aarup and Douglas Busvine
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Russian warlord Prigozhin to POLITICO: Get me F-35 fighter jets
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The notorious Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has asked POLITICO for help in equipping his Wagner private army with Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.
In a sarcastic voice message delivered in response to a request for comment, Prigozhin also sought assistance in obtaining U.S.-made sniper rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers.
“I ask you to talk to your contacts so that we can get these supplies,” said Prigozhin, whose mercenaries have fought at the forefront of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
“I have one more request for you,” Prigozhin continued. “So: F-35s. If it’s possible, as we previously discussed, to buy up supplies via New Zealand. They may need to refuel in Hawaii, but I don’t really foresee a problem.”
Prigozhin’s statement appeared intended as a joke: It was delivered in a jovial, ironic tone that was in complete contrast to the furious, profanity-laden tirades he has unleashed at Russia’s top military brass over problems supplying his forces.
POLITICO reached out to Prigozhin as part of an investigation which found evidence that the maker of the Russian Orsis T-5000 rifle used by his men had acquired ammunition from an American company.
In an apparent denial, he answered that Wagner, which recently captured the town of Bakhmut after a bloody, months-long battle, had “a huge amount of NATO-issue ammunition left over from the Ukrainian army.”
‘I’m sure you know Viktor’
In the two-and-a-half minute recording posted on his Kepka Prigozhina Telegram channel, Prigozhin also offered an introduction to Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer freed last December by the U.S. in a prisoner swap for pro basketball player Brittney Greiner.
“I’m sure you know Viktor Bout well,” said Prigozhin. “I’ve already talked to him — he’s ready to handle all deliveries. But we’ll assume you are a party in this dialogue from the side of the United States of America.”
“So, I shake your hand, huge thanks for the questions, and I hope you respond to me. Obviously, about the deliveries of the F-35s, respond in a private message.”
And, in a parting shot, Prigozhin said: “Douglas, buddy, I completely forgot! If the deal goes through, my personal Orsis [rifle] will be my gift to you.
Additional reporting by Zoya Sheftalovich and Emma Krstic.
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Douglas Busvine
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This is Ukraine’s D-Day
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Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
Ukraine is on the cusp of what may well prove to be one of the two key battles of the war that was unleashed on it by Russia.
The first was Ukraine’s successful defense of Kyiv over a year ago. Russia had a plan, but it was badly executed — Ukraine didn’t have much of one and, greatly assisted by Western-supplied Javelin and NLAW anti-tank missiles, winged it. Eventually, Russia’s overly cocky and poorly commanded forces were outmaneuvered by the agility, bravery and improvisational skills of Ukraine’s forces.
We are now likely in the opening gambits of the second crucial battle, as Ukraine’s much anticipated counteroffensive in the east of the country appears imminent — if not already underway. However, officials in Kyiv still worry about whether they’ve enough of all they need to strike hard and deep.
We are now on the brink of the second crucial battle, as Ukraine’s much anticipated counteroffensive in the east of the country appears imminent. However, officials in Kyiv still worry about whether they’ve enough of all they need to strike hard and deep.
Speaking at the weekend, the deputy head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office Ihor Zhovkva told the Sunday Times, “if you want to start a successful counter-offensive you need everything at your disposal, including artillery, armoured vehicles and tanks, so probably we don’t have enough.”
Nonetheless, Zelenskyy himself said Friday that he was now ready to launch the counteroffensive, but he also sought to temper expectations, saying the battlefield struggle ahead would take some time and come at heavy cost. And to some eyes, the opening moves appeared to be starting as this article was written.
The Ukrainian leader must feel akin to former United States President Dwight Eisenhower on the eve of D-Day. “The eyes of the world are upon you,” Eisenhower wrote in a famous letter sent to troops before the assault. “We will accept nothing less than full victory! Good Luck!” But he also drafted another in case of failure, preemptively writing, “The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.” The letter never had to be sent.
Today, on the eve of battle, 79 years on from when Eisenhower drafted his D-Day messages, Ukraine and Russia are both still doing all they can to disrupt and deceive each other, with drone and missile strikes on both military and civilian targets.
Russia’s relentless aerial attacks on Kyiv over the last four weeks — involving 400 Iranian Shahed drones and 114 cruise missiles — have been aimed at trying to psych Ukrainians out. Shifting away from targeting the country’s energy grid, Russia’s been focused on Ukrainian command, as well as their decision-making centers and logistical hubs, and on Sunday, Russian missiles struck an air force base in central Ukraine.
“Their primary goal is to stop our counteroffensive,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Volodymyr Havrylov told a security conference in Singapore.
The eyes of the world are on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images Likewise, Ukraine has been doing its utmost to cause disorder and to disturb its foes not only with drones and shelling but also with increasingly audacious sabotage missions — both behind enemy lines in occupied Ukraine and inside Russia — deploying apparently covert agents and Russian rebels grouped together in the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps.
These incursions in the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine are showing just how vulnerable Russia’s borders are. But along with the cross-border shelling that’s seen Shebekino and Volokonovksky hit with hundreds of artillery rounds in recent days, they also have a dual function: Bringing the war home to the Russians — much as the recent drone attacks on Moscow have been doing — while potentially also cajoling Russia into moving some troops deployed along the front lines in order to contain the long-awaited counteroffensive.
The fighting in Belgorod is aggravating the political infighting in Russia as well, with Yevgeny Prigozhin — the murderous leader of the Wagner paramilitary group — announcing Saturday he was ready to send his mercenaries to defend the border region. “If the Ministry of Defense does not stop what is happening in the Belgorod region […] where Russian territory is, in fact, being captured, then obviously we will arrive,” he said in an audio message. Prigozhin added that he wouldn’t wait for official authorization, stating, “the only thing we’ll be asking for is ammunition, so that we don’t arrive, as we say back home, bare arsed in the cold.”
These incursions, which Kyiv denies having any hand in, are a mocking echo of Russia’s supposedly deniable “little green men,” deployed in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014 to spearhead annexation and land grab. But, ultimately, much like the drone attacks, missile strikes and artillery bombardments conducted by both sides, they are mere sideshows — albeit important ones if they manage to trick Russia into looking the wrong way and misjudging where the counteroffensive’s main thrust will come from.
And that’s a question Ukraine’s doing its best to avoid answering ahead of the guns roaring.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s military doubled down on its plea for operational silence regarding the counteroffensive, urging the public not to speculate about the assault or share any images that could give the game away. “Plans love silence,” the defense ministry said in a video posted to its social media channels, featuring masked troops holding their fingers against their lips. However, officials themselves have stoked speculation with their recent efforts to taunt Russia, posting a video showing troops preparing for battle and chanting a blessing and a promise just last week.
Still, there’s little secret to the broad options — as Russians can read maps too.
Undoubtedly, the biggest possible surprise would come if Ukraine were to launch its major thrust in the northeastern oblast of Kharkiv, where Russian defenses collapsed last fall, in the face of an unexpected attack that even Ukrainian ground commanders weren’t informed of until the eve of assault. The aim of such a strike here would be to drive deep into Luhansk, force Russia out of Severodonetsk and threaten Bakhmut.
Pushing into Donetsk would also be an option for Ukraine, but the attack with the biggest potential payoff would be through Zaporizhia and Kherson, pushing toward Mariupol, Berdiansk, Melitopol and Tokmak, with the aim of severing the so-called land bridge connecting mainland Russia and the southern Ukrainian territories that Russia occupies via the Crimean isthmus.
And this is where most seasoned military observers expect an attack to be focused — as do map-reading Russians, apparently. According to open-source satellite imagery and Ukrainian field commanders who spoke with POLITICO, in recent weeks, Russian forces have been fortifying Zaporizhzhia oblast and building up a series of defense lines — they’ve also been shoring up defenses in northern Crimea for months.
But as Britain’s Royal United Services Institute noted in a recent report, this could cause problems for Ukraine: “Engineering has proven to be one of the strongest branches of the Russian military,” the report said. “The defenses now constructed, consisting of complex obstacles and field fortifications, will pose a major tactical challenge to Ukrainian offensive operations.”
Thus, Ukraine’s now pinning some of its hopes on signs that Russia’s running low on artillery shells; and it also believes it can exploit Russia’s low morale and poor command coordination.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s asking questions of itself too: Will it be able to pull off a truly coordinated combined arms warfare and avoid being too sequential or plodding as it sometimes has in the past? When facing stout resistance, can it continue to push on and not hesitate? And, above all, have Ukrainian forces trained enough with the new Western-supplied tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment they only recently got?
In his message, hours before D-Day, Eisenhower noted: “The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!” And this, now, is Ukraine’s D-Day.
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Jamie Dettmer
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