Prigozhin. Rebel With a Pause
The History of the Wagner Group's Mutiny: What We Know a Year Later
A year ago, the Prigozhin uprising occurred in Russia. Since then, the country has changed so drastically that it feels as if the Wagner Group's mutiny happened not a year ago, but in a past life. Indeed, Putin seems to have based his extensive government reshuffle solely on one criterion: how individuals behaved during the uprising a year ago. I tried to understand what new information we have learned about the events of this year—and how it has impacted Putin's regime.
Prigozhin, Trump, Putin
Just days before his rebellion, Yevgeny Prigozhin recorded a video confession for some reason. This is a remarkable historical testimony. In it, he discusses, for instance, how the Wagner Group ended up in Ukraine.
According to Prigozhin, Putin initially expected the war in Ukraine to last only a few days, ending with a coup in Ukraine and the installation of a puppet pro-Russian president, who was to be Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch, former KGB agent, and long-time friend of Putin, who even baptized his daughter.
However, just a couple of weeks after the invasion, it became clear that all predictions were wrong – and then Putin called Prigozhin and tasked him with heading to Ukraine.
His Wagner Group had extensive combat experience in Syria, but most importantly, it was in Syria where the feud between Prigozhin and Sergei Shoigu, the then Minister of Defense of Russia, began. The cause was the famous battle at Khasham in February 2018.
At that time, Prigozhin ordered his soldiers to occupy territories near the Conoco oil refinery in Deir ez-Zor, which was under American military control. Upon detecting the advance of unknown militants, the Pentagon contacted the Russian General Staff. And the generals from Moscow confidently stated: it's not us, do whatever you want with these people.
Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Yevgeny Prigozhin (St.Petersburg, 2004)
Unidentified militants were approaching the plant – and then the American military decided to eliminate this threat. Kremlin officials are convinced that Donald Trump personally made this decision. As a result, on February 18, the first post-Cold War clash between Americans and Russians occurred. Eighty Wagner Group fighters were killed, and about 200 were wounded.
Yevgeny Prigozhin was furious – he accused the Minister of Defense Shoigu of betrayal. Putin was puzzled and did not know how to react but decided to do nothing. Russian authorities did not acknowledge that the dead were Russian citizens, and the Kremlin pretended as if nothing had happened.
But in March 2022, Putin offered Prigozhin a chance to settle scores with his old enemy. Firstly, to demonstrate that the Wagner Group could fight on the front lines no worse than the regular Russian army. But most importantly, Putin did not want Shoigu and the army generals to gain popularity against the backdrop of the war – so he gave Prigozhin carte blanche to act as a counterweight to the Ministry of Defense, including using his media outlets. Prigozhin interpreted Putin's words in his own way: he was tasked with starting an information war against the army command. And his troll empire began to destroy Shoigu and elevate Prigozhin himself.
Over several months, Prigozhin transformed from a mythic figure into the most popular public politician in the country. His meteoric political ascent began in the summer of 2022, when he started visiting Russian prisons and recruiting inmates into his private army. Each time, he spoke to the inmates and promised a pardon to anyone who signed a contract and went to fight in Ukraine: six months of service, and then freedom.
This tour of prisons shocked many, but most of all, it shocked Russian officials, for Prigozhin would have had to break the resistance of five key Russian law enforcement structures to freely take inmates from prisons.
Firstly, there is the FSIN – the Federal Penitentiary Service. The prison authority in Russia has always treated inmates as its own property. The FSIN is a state within a state, a slave-owning kingdom within Russia. The leadership of the FSIN uses the slave labor of inmates and makes huge profits from it. The emergence of an outsider who freely manages in the colonies and takes people away is a clear challenge to the system.
Additionally, there are four more agencies whose work consists of sending citizens to prison. These are the FSB, the Ministry of Interior, the Prosecutor General's Office, and the Investigative Committee. All four structures have a special status, are subordinate only to President Putin, and no one dares to argue with them. Any official or businessman is terrified of all four because they can imprison anyone. It is known that in Russia, the percentage of acquittal verdicts is less than one percent, so anyone pursued by the FSB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Prosecutor General's Office, or Investigative Committee has no chance of remaining free. But suddenly, in the summer of 2022, the situation changed—there emerged a joker who beat all four aces at once. He could take anyone sentenced to any term—his powers were limitless.
To achieve such omnipotence, it would clearly not be enough for Prigozhin to have just a mandate from Putin—in that case, Putin would have to constantly be on the phone confirming to officials at various levels that Prigozhin, a previously convicted individual without any government position, had super-authority, greater than that of the FSB. Obviously, Prigozhin managed to establish relationships with the leadership of various security agencies himself so that they would not hinder, but help and obey him. Thus, he himself became a powerful figure—thanks to his talent to get along with people.
Prigozhin and His Friends
Although Prigozhin was never part of the system, he managed to establish very close contacts with many of its elements.
Prigozhin, of course, knew well all those from St. Petersburg—a significant crowd within Putin’s elite. President Putin's close friends and current oligarchs, Yuri Kovalchuk and Arkady Rotenberg, knew Prigozhin back in the 90s when they were all just starting in business and could not have imagined that one day they would own all of Russia. However, the old friends still considered restaurateur Prigozhin as part of the service staff, hence they did not show him due respect. But his new acquaintances proved to be much more useful.
The Wagner Group was established in 2014 under the direct supervision of the then leadership of the Ministry of Defense. The curator of the new structure was Alexey Dyumin, Putin's former closest bodyguard. In 2014, he commanded a special unit within the Russian army—the so-called Special Operations Forces. It was his units that carried out the occupation of Crimea and were responsible for creating new private armies capable of handling sensitive tasks. Dyumin met Prigozhin then, and they became friends. In 2016, Putin appointed Dyumin as the governor of the Tula region—since then, he has been called one of the likely successors to the president. The friendship between Prigozhin and Dyumin persisted.
Yevgeny Prigozhin and Alexey Dyumin
Another important acquaintance of Prigozhin's was Andrei Belousov, Putin's economic advisor. It was Belousov who traditionally criticized how the Ministry of Defense was spending money and believed that private armies were much more effective. They became ideological allies with Prigozhin: their common disdain for Shoigu and the inefficiency of the Russian army brought them closer.
As the situation in Ukraine developed, Prigozhin began to form his own clan. Many officials and political figures who did not have independent access to Putin and believed that Prigozhin's influence was growing started aligning with him.
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