Power Struggle in Russia: The Rise and Fall of Yevgeny Prigozhin

2023-06-26 08:13:14

How did the power struggle in Russia come about?

The head of the Russian private army “Wagner”, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has repeatedly tangled with the Russian military leadership. On Friday he again criticized them openly and particularly clearly, speaking of Russian attacks on his troops and possible countermeasures. On Saturday night it became known that the Russian secret service FSB was investigating an attempted military coup against Prigozhin.

On Saturday, Prigozhin then had his mercenaries advance into Russian territory. They took control of the military installations at the army headquarters in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and advanced towards Moscow. On Saturday evening, however, Prigozhin recalled his troops after making a deal with President Putin. The deal stipulates that Prigozhin will be allowed to travel to Belarus with impunity and that his soldiers will also remain unpunished.

Putin had previously spoken of mutiny and announced penalties with regard to the actions of the Wagner troupe.

“All those who prepared the uprising will suffer the inevitable punishment.” Vladimir Putin, Russian President

Why did Prigozhin do this?

There is a lot of speculation about this. Several observers assume that Prigozhin fought for his own survival. “For me, it was more a position of Prigozhin’s weakness,” suspects Stefan Meister on WDR, a political scientist at the German Society for Foreign Relations. Prigozhin was under pressure after Putin dropped him and tried to “negotiate safe passage for himself and his people.”

“Prigozhin has clearly lost his nerve,” retired US General David Petraeus, a former CIA director, told US news channel CNN.

Neither mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin nor President Vladimir Putin have spoken since the Kremlin announced on Saturday the agreement between Wagner on the one hand and Russia’s military and security authorities on the other.

What does the deal mean?

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko negotiated the deal. Meister considers it possible that this was a staging “to present it in this light that there was an external mediator”. The American Institute for War Studies, a think tank in Washington, described Lukashenko’s mediation as humiliating for Putin.

Many observers therefore doubt whether Prigozhin will really get away without consequences. “Of course Putin cannot accept this loss of power, this loss of face,” says Meister. “We’ll see whether Prigozhin can survive it personally.”

Russia expert Leslie Schübel from the Körber Foundation also believes it is impossible for Prigozhin to lead a quiet life in Belarus: “I think he will lose everything that makes life comfortable for him and I can probably be happy if he does life itself does not lose,” she explained on WDR.

The deal was also about the future of Wagner’s soldiers: the soldiers involved in the revolt should go unpunished. The mercenaries who did not take part in the uprising should receive an offer to serve in the Russian army.

Is Putin’s power shaky?

Many observers see a weakening of President Putin in the events of the past few days. “I think we’ve seen more cracks in the Russian facade,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC. According to the American Institute for War Studies, Prigozhin’s rebellion revealed significant weaknesses in the Kremlin and the Russian Defense Ministry.

The Kremlin’s obvious surprise at Prigozhin’s rebellion also does not reflect well on Russia’s domestic secret service, the FSB. Whether the events will weaken Putin in the long term and what that would mean for Russia is still difficult to predict.

Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin?

Prigozhin and Putin | Image source: dpa / Alexei Druzhinin

Prigozhin, 62, is a wealthy Russian businessman who has long been said to be close to President Vladimir Putin. He is often called “Putin’s chef” because he once ran a restaurant in St. Petersburg where Putin used to dine. His influence and power obviously went much further.

In addition to a huge catering company that supplies state institutions, Prigozhin also owns media companies and so-called “troll factories” for influencing social media. “Essentially, he is a private businessman who is heavily dependent on how his relations with the authorities are structured,” said Stanovaya, founder of analytics company R.Politik.

Some commentators even thought that Prigozhin was the future defense minister. It was always questionable whether Putin would really repudiate his long-standing minister, Shoigu. It has always remained unclear how much influence Prigozhin actually had in Putin’s entourage. But he hasn’t shied away from taking on the military and the Department of Defense in the past.

What is the so-called Wagner troupe?

Two men are known to be the founders of the mercenary army: Dmitri Utkin and the current boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Utkin is a former intelligence officer, in 2016 he was honored in Russia as a Hero of the Fatherland. He is said to have a fondness for the German composer Richard Wagner and also named the mercenary army after him. It was only in September that Prigozhin publicly admitted that he had anything to do with the Wagner group. According to him, he founded it in 2014.

Originally, the Wagner troupe consisted of veterans of the Russian armed forces. Putin has repeatedly stated that the Wagner Group does not represent the state. However, she does not violate Russian laws and has the right to work anywhere in the world and promote her business interests. The Wagner group has already done this in Syria, Mali, Libya and the Central African Republic, where the mercenaries are used to put down uprisings.

What does this mean for the war in Ukraine?

The Russian government has repeatedly relied on the Wagner mercenaries in the Ukraine. Among other things, they played an important role in the battle for the city of Bakhmut. At the beginning of the Ukraine war, Prigozhin was also allowed to recruit convicts and use them in tanks, airplanes and missile defense systems. It is now unclear whether and how the mercenaries will continue to fight in Ukraine. In the medium term, the power struggle in Russia could help Ukraine, says Meister, because Russia is weakened. “But we may not see that in the short term because the troops are still fighting and it doesn’t have that great an effect at first.”