Something unusual happened in Ukraine two weeks ago, something that hasn’t happened since July 2022 — Russia captured a Ukrainian town.
ollowing months of fierce urban fighting, Russia seized what’s left of the former Donetsk industrial town of Soledar (pre-war population, 10,000).
During the latter part of last year, as it ceded territory to Ukraine in key frontline sectors such as Kharkiv in the north and Kherson in the south, Vladimir Putin’s invasion force failed to make any headway in sectors where it had nominal superiority.
In that sense, the fall of Soledar was against the battlefield run of play, and a cause for Russian celebration.
The mercenary group is composed primarily of Russian convicts
This small town is of no strategic value and in itself would not be sufficient to justify the headlines it received. But there were several extraordinary factors that ensured the taking of Soledar made those headlines.
Incredibly, the man who claimed credit for the Soledar victory has no military background, no military rank of any kind.
What’s more, the military group that seized the town is, to put it mildly, a very unconventional military formation, composed as it is primarily of Russian convicts.
Step forward Yevgeny Prigozhin, ex-convict, catering and casino oligarch — and the founder, owner and public face of the Wagner Group.
Because of the catering services he provides to the Kremlin, Prigozhin is better known as ‘Putin’s chef’. He is also on the FBI’s wanted list for allegedly funding and directing a massive social media interference operation to influence the 2016 US elections.
Last week, Wagner was designated a transnational criminal organisation
The Wagner Group, the private army he controls, is referred to by Ukrainian security services as ‘Putin’s private army’. Indeed, the mercenary militia is largely funded by Prigozhin from the lucrative $1bn (€920m) contract he was given by Putin to provide catering services to the Russian state.
The Wagner Group first came to public attention during Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Its mercenaries fought with Russian-backed separatists in the Luhansk region at the same time. This helped Russia take control of parts of eastern Ukraine while simultaneously allowing Putin to deny any direct involvement in the occupation.
Wagner played an active role in Putin’s Syrian campaign on behalf of Bashar al-Assad, where it suffered heavy casualties.
It has also provided military services to other Kremlin-backed dictators around the world, especially in Africa where it has up to 10,000 mercenaries fighting in Libya, Sudan, Mozambique, Mali and the Central African Republic.
Wagner’s arrival in these countries precipitated a reign of death and destruction leading to accusations of human rights abuses, including summary executions, torture and rape.
For these ‘services’ Prigozhin has been granted highly profitable natural resource concessions, including gold, diamonds, oil and lumber franchises in Syria, Sudan and the Central African Republic. The combination of all these nefarious activities has led to Prigozhin becoming the most sanctioned Russian on the planet.
Last week, Wagner was designated a transnational criminal organisation by the Biden Administration.
But that is a largely symbolic action. Given the scale of its Isis-like terrorist activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, the US needs to designate Wagner an international terrorist organisation — then much more robust sanctions can be applied.
Clearly Wagner acts as an unofficial military appendage of the Kremlin, a private Russian mercenary army which Putin has carefully nurtured, and funded.
It was Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last February that really propelled the previously shadowy Prigozhin and his private militia into the limelight.
Up to then Prigozhin, like Putin, had denied any knowledge or involvement with Wagner. Suddenly, as Wagner troops began to play a central role in Russia’s Ukrainian war, Prigozhin reversed tack and began to actively court publicity as the public face of Wagner.
As the Russian army’s war in Ukraine went from bad to worse, Prigozhin saw his opportunity to secure his position as a military supremo; he promised Putin he would ‘win the war in Ukraine’ for him.
A Wagner deserter was later captured by the Group and ‘executed’ — with a sledgehammer
He concentrated his militia forces around Bakhmut in the expectation of an easy victory. However, the Ukrainian army in Bakhmut, as elsewhere, proved to be a much tougher opponent than either he or Putin had envisaged.
In an artillery duel that lasted for months, both sides suffered enormous casualties.
With no reserves to draw on, Prigozhin, who served many years in jail himself for various crimes, began recruiting volunteers from Russia’s jails. Up to 40,000 convicts joined the Wagner army on the promise of high wages and unconditional release from prison after serving six months.
Sent to the Bakhmut cauldron with no training, they immediately became cannon fodder. It is estimated that up to 30,000 of these convicts were either killed in action, wounded, deserted, or were taken prisoner.
As one Ukrainian commander put it “we are executing Russian jailbirds with Ukrainian bullets”.
A Wagner deserter was later captured by the Group and ‘executed’ — with a sledgehammer. The murder was filmed by his captors, a snuff movie which Prigozhin described as “a dog dying a dog’s death”.
Despite the high body count, Bakhmut refused to fall. So, when Soledar — a much smaller town north of Bakhmut — fell Prigozhin made a song and dance about it. But nobody was fooled, least of all Putin.
Far from “winning the war in Ukraine”, after months of trying, the Wagner convict army couldn’t take the strategically inconsequential town of Bakhmut. It also ended Prigozhin’s attempt to upstage the official Russian army which has now largely replaced the depleted Wagner group in Bakhmut.
That, of course, is not to argue that Wagner is a spent force, far from it.
The fact Putin has fostered a parallel private army in competition with the official Russian army says much about Putin’s Russia.
No state has a future in which the function of a “monopoly on the use of force” is shared between public and private armies. In institutional terms, this can only be a recipe for disaster. How exactly this fiasco-in-waiting plays out is anyone’s guess.
Defeats in war have a history of causing profound internal change in Russia.
The nation’s defeat by Japan in 1905 resulted in a revolution that year. The crisis caused by Russia’s involvement in World War I was a catalyst for the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The 1989 defeat in Afghanistan contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union two years later.
However, Putin’s defeat in Ukraine is unlikely to precipitate a new Russian revolution.
More accurately, it would be the final act in the disintegration of the old Soviet Empire — which Putin’s accession to power two decades ago had merely postponed.
