Their leader is officially dead, as is their founding commander. Russian President Vladimir Putin claims it does not exist. Wagner, the once-powerful Russian private military company that fell from the graces of the Kremlin after an abortive mutiny in June, has been thrown into even greater uncertainty since August 23, when its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was killed in a plane crash. .
Russian authorities said DNA tests confirmed that Prigozhin and nine other people named on the plane’s manifest had died in the suspicious crash. Attention now turns to whether Wagner, who Prigozhin built into a global empire that benefited Moscow as well as his own pocket, will also die.
American and Western officials say the Kremlin is considering ways to bring Wagner under more direct control of the Russian state, but has not made any final decisions.
Russia is unlikely to want to squander the trained fighters, geopolitical forays and business interests that Prigozhin has cultivated since Wagner’s founding in 2014. His organization has operated in at least 10 countries. But finding a way to neutralize an armed organization that posed one of the biggest threats to Putin’s rule in 23 years, while preserving its fighting power and global ties, is difficult, particularly given the enmity between the group’s fighters. and the leadership of the Russian Defense Ministry.
“I believe that the PMC Wagner, itself, as a structure, will probably not existAleksandr Borodai, a member of the Russian parliament who briefly served in 2014 as a Moscow-installed proxy leader in Donetsk, Ukraine, said in an interview. He said Wagner’s fighters were already joining volunteer formations, as well as official units, under the Russian armed forces.
Putin has sent mixed signals about his plans. In an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant in July, he said that during a meeting after the mutiny in late June, he told Wagner’s commanders that they could continue to serve together under different leadership. Putin said that Prigozhin refused on behalf of his commanders. In the same interview, Putin also said that Wagner does not exist because Russian law does not allow private military companies.
In theory, Wagner could still function without Prigozhin and its founding commander, Dmitri V. Utkin, who Russian authorities also confirmed was killed in the crash.
The mercenary group has what its affiliated Telegram channels describe as a “council of commanders” that oversees day-to-day operational affairs. Several council members were not on Prigozhin’s plane. Neither has appeared in public or issued a statement since the accident, despite repeated promises of an announcement soon on Telegram.
“Utkin and Prigozhin are not the whole leadership,” said a 36-year-old Wagner volunteer who gave only his code name, Adzhit. “If you know the internal structure of Wagner, you can understand one thing: the loss of one, two or three will in no way affect the effectiveness of this formation.”
Still, without the clear go-ahead from the Kremlin, the group’s operations risk falling apart. Prigozhin’s personal link to Putin, dating back to 1990s St. Petersburg, allowed the tycoon to sell geopolitical power alongside security services. Even after the riot, Prigozhin was flying to locations in Africa trying to reassure customers and continue operations.
His interests spanned oil, gas, precious metals and stones, Putin said, noting that the tycoon returned to meet with officials the day before he boarded the ill-fated plane.
Catrina Doxsee, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said she anticipated the model Prigozhin developed — using a shady parastatal to advance international interests, but also to do business — would continue in some form. in Russia. But she suspects that future operations of this nature could be more fractured.
“One of the big things that the June riot demonstrated was the problem Putin faces in allowing one company, and really one man, to maintain a monopoly on power and knowledge over all these different operations,” Doxsee said.
He said that in the future there could be “many different players playing these roles, rather than a monopoly.”
Anton Troianovski, Julian E. Barnes, and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
PAUL SONNE AND VALERIE HOPKINS. THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6871741, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-08-30 21:20:11
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