Ukraine stands to gain from Wagner Group revolt in Russia, experts say

Two days after the Wagner Group’s stunning, short-lived rebellion inside Russia seemingly ended in a deal that saw the mercenaries’ boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, fly to exile in Belarus, more questions than answers remain.

According to Russian state media, all charges against those involved in the uprising have now been dropped. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who delivered a brief, combative speech Monday, called Wagner militants “patriots,” and said they were led by the nose into coming within a few hours’ drive from Moscow by “traitors.”

Whatever the outcome of the brief standoff between Putin and Prigozhin, however, there is one beneficiary of Russian soldiers shooting at each other: Ukraine.

As Wagner forces pushed hundreds of miles through Russia on Saturday, the Russian Air Force suffered its worst day in Ukraine in months, losing six helicopters and an airborne command post in a few hours. Additionally, anywhere from 10,000 to 25,000 Wagner mercenaries look poised to leave the battlefield in Ukraine for the foreseeable future just as Kyiv has launched its springtime counteroffensive.

“All in all, it’s obviously good for Ukraine,” Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, said on Monday. “Just how good for Ukraine remains to be seen.”

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Wagner mercenaries have been a significant source of offensive power for Russia since the beginning of Putin’s “special military operation” in February 2022. Their most notable success was the capture of the city of Bakhmut, after a horrific campaign of street-to-street fighting that resulted in tens of thousands dead and wounded since December of last year, according to U.S. estimates.

Having recruited prisoners from Russian jails on six-month contracts who were then sent to the most dangerous areas of the front, Wagner often used them in suicidal human-wave-style assaults on Ukrainian positions. In an interview with Yahoo News in April, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, said Wagner was the only game in town: “Even the convicts they recruit from Russian prisons are being trained to serve, and that is why the results are a lot better than what normal regular army have. They are our enemy, but we need to admit that they are an enemy you’re not ashamed of.”

Putin has now given Wagner fighters three options: Sign a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense and become a member of the regular army; lay down arms and retire from the battlefield altogether; or follow Prigozhin into exile in Belarus.

For months, Wagner’s social media channels have followed their boss’s lead in disparaging Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Wagner fighters have enjoyed higher salaries than regulars in the Russian military and greater degrees of operational freedom. They also espouse a cult-like esprit de corps, with Prigozhin seen as their undisputed leader. Research conducted by Ukrainian organizations have found that Wagner fighters call Prigozhin “batya,” Russian for “dad” or “father,” in conversation, and openly mock mobilized or contract soldiers in the ministry. When Wagner finally declared victory in Bakhmut, its soldiers raised their own flag rather than that of Russia.

Perhaps the biggest question now is whether these men will go quietly into retirement or head for new digs in Minsk, where, according to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, they’ll have to pay for their own upkeep. Either way, they will likely be less of a problem for Kyiv.

Paying the bills

Prigozhin remains a wildcard, however. A street thug who spent almost a decade behind bars before reinventing himself as a hot dog merchant turned catering magnate, he formerly drew the most international attention for his role in influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election — a Russian-backed operation he once denied to the point of litigation, but now happily claims credit for. The financier and founder of the Internet Research Agency, the so-called troll farm set up in his native St. Petersburg, Prigozhin has been repeatedly sanctioned and indicted in the U.S., where Wagner is now considered a transnational criminal organization.

Since its creation in 2014, following Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, Wagner has deployed in a host of foreign countries, including Syria, where it squared off against U.S. forces in 2018. It has also committed documented atrocities, including rape and mass murder, in a number of African countries. It has punished its own comrades who have been captured on the battlefield by the Ukrainian Army, and traded back in prison exchanges, by smashing in their heads with sledgehammers, a tool that has become a proud symbol of Wagner’s uncompromising brutality.

Putin, meanwhile, has been clear about who pays Wagner’s bills.

“We fully financed this group from the federal budget,” he announced in a Tuesday press conference. “Just from May 22 until May 23 the state paid Wagner companies 86,262,000,000 rubles [$1 billion] for cash support and incentive payments.”

But given the schism between Prigozhin and Putin, that flow of money could soon be cut off, degrading Wagner’s capabilities.

“If Wagner loses Russian government support, its ability to recruit, and many of its current members, it won't be the same organization,” Rob Lee, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote Tuesday on Twitter.