Although the military uprising of the Wagner group in Russia ended with an agreement between its boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Russian government, there is a good chance that its consequences will be long-lasting, both due to the ongoing war in Ukraine and, above all , for the regime of Vladimir Putin.
After an incredible day on Saturday it seems that things are getting back to normal in Russia. All night and part of Sunday morning Wagner group military assets withdrew from Rostov-on-Don, the city in southern Russia they had partially occupied, and the Kremlin said Prigozhin himself went to Belarus, in what which would appear to be a kind of exile. All possible charges against the Wagner group fighters have been dropped, and now – at least this is the narrative of the Russian government – the mercenaries will orderly return to fight on the Ukrainian front.
In reality it is not yet clear if things will really go like this. The consequences of the revolt of the Wagner group could be felt on two fronts: on the one hand the war in Ukraine and on the other internal Russian politics, where the revolt may have weakened the authority of President Putin.
In Ukraine
To carry out the revolt on Russian territory and march on Rostov and Moscow, the Wagner mercenary group had withdrawn all its fighters from the Ukrainian front and committed them to Russian territory. According to Prigozhin, there were a total of 25,000 people, and they are not just any soldiers: the mercenaries of the Wagner group are generally well armed and trained. Due to the large losses suffered during the war and the fact that many of the new recruits were conscripted in prisons, the military strength of the group has certainly been diluted, but it is estimated that Wagner still has a core of about 5,000 men of the old guard, comparable to elite military forces.
On Saturday the Ukrainian army tried to take advantage of the confusion on the Russian side by launching an offensive on several fronts, starting from Bakhmut (where the bulk of the Wagner group was stationed and fought in recent months): it achieved some limited success but no it managed to break through the Russian lines at no point.
In any case, precisely because the Ukrainian counter-offensive is underway, the 25,000 fighters of the Wagner group would be very useful to Russia. However, reintegrating them at the front after the revolt risks being difficult. First of all, because welcoming soldiers who have just rebelled against the country they are fighting for as if nothing had happened could be dangerous. Secondly because, if Prigozhin has really been ousted as head of the group, it is possible that many mercenaries loyal to him will leave Wagner, or may not want to be integrated into the regular army, as the Russian Defense Ministry seems to want to do.
On the other hand, losing the contribution of the Wagner group would be serious for the Russian armed forces, and for this reason it is probable that the decisions of the Russian military commands in the next few days will be rather delicate.
In Russia
In the immediate term, the Wagner uprising was a show of gross weakness for Vladimir Putin and his regime.
The operation that led to the occupation of Rostov-on-Don and the march of militiamen towards Moscow had in all probability been prepared weeks in advance, but caught the Russian security services unprepared, who reacted with delay to what was happening: it is a rather dangerous signal of the inefficiency of Russian intelligence. (In contrast, US intelligence said on Sunday that had detected signs that Prigozhin was preparing to move against Putin).
Even the speech with which Putin called Prigozhin a traitor on Saturday morning, albeit extremely harsh and decisive, had surreal elements: the Russian president found himself forced to denounce an internal mutiny of the forces affiliated to him on live national TV, making known to all that the situation was so serious as to compromise the very stability of the country. Putin even cited 1917 as a comparison, i.e. the year of the Russian Revolution in which the Bolsheviks overthrew Tsar Nicholas II. Putin obviously didn’t say it, but in this comparison he would be the tsar.
Putin appeared again on Russian state television on Sunday, in a brief interview in which he tried to reassure the population that all is well and that his first concern is the “special military operation”, that is, the euphemism with which the Russian propaganda calls for the invasion of Ukraine.
More generally, some analysts wondered why throughout Saturday the forces of the Wagner group were in fact allowed to occupy a large part of Rostov and to march undisturbed and at high speed towards Moscow, with almost no obstacles. There may tend to be two hypotheses: the first is that the government itself had decided to reduce conflicts to a minimum to avoid bloodshed, hoping that a non-military agreement would be found, as it later happened.
The second hypothesis is that at least a part of the Russian establishment (regional governors, high ranks of the army) decided not to side with either side and to see how the clash between Prigozhin and Putin would end. In this case it would be a bad sign for the Putin regime, which is very much based on personal loyalty.
For some time, many analysts have argued that a long war like the one being fought in Ukraine is a problem above all for Ukraine, which is economically and militarily more fragile and which depends almost entirely on aid from the West. The reasoning was that Putin aimed to prolong the war in Ukraine as much as possible, relying on his own internal stability and betting that in the long run the war would wear down and destabilize both Ukraine and its allies. The revolt of the Wagner group seems to demonstrate that the war in Ukraine is also having destabilizing effects on Russia.