‘There’s nobody on earth who can stop them’ What Wagner Group veterans have to say about Yevgeny Prigozhin’s armed rebellion
Prigozhin “started to get restless” about two weeks ago, sources close to the Kremlin and the Russian government
told Meduza, right after Putin said that mercenary groups would be required to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry if they wanted to continue serving in Ukraine.
Putin himself explained that the change was necessary so that Wagner mercenaries could be “covered by social guarantees.” But Prigozhin categorically
refused to sign an agreement with the agency and made unofficial attempts to bypass Putin’s order. “He understood that his influence would be greatly undermined. He made phone calls, offering alternative solutions like subordinating Wagner Group to the National Guard. Plus, he was pressing for control over the preparation of territorial defense forces in the border regions. And he was denied,”
said a source close to the Kremlin.
Another reason Prigozhin resisted the idea of giving the regular military control over Wagner Group personnel was that it would jeopardize his business interests in Africa, explained a veteran of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) who is familiar with the catering tycoon’s enterprises there. “When Shoigu wanted to put [Wagner Group fighters] in uniform, he was trying to take over all the lucrative African ventures, meaning all the mines, all the stuff that would fall under the Defense Ministry. That was the final straw,” said the source.
Still, people who knew Prigozhin a year ago
described him as someone fully immersed in the “heroic routine” of Russia’s war in Ukraine. “He was really active there, he saw himself as a military commander,” said one source. “He got caught up in that drive; he saw how he could increase his own influence. When you wake up and go to bed hearing whispers about how great you are, your self-control mechanisms weaken.”
According to the source, Prigozhin gradually began attributing all of the failures he encountered to the “general decay” of the Defense Ministry (which was struggling to provide Wagner Group with ammunition) and the mercenaries’ “strange position” in the war. (This source is confident that Prigozhin was referring to Vladimir Putin when talking about a “
happy grandpa” who doesn’t know what’s going on, in a tirade he posted online in May, though Prigozhin himself denied this.)
According to a former FSB officer who spoke to Meduza, six months ago Prigozhin got a “promise” from the country’s top leadership that if he provided evidence that the Russian Defense Ministry was in fact intentionally and illegally obstructing Wagner Group’s work, the generals would be “brought to trial.”
Prigozhin was sure he had supplied that evidence (Meduza does not know what the evidence in question might be) and allegedly even
reported Sergey Shoigu and General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov to the Investigative Committee. “He was counting on the St. Petersburg team [in the government] to fulfill their obligations,” said the source.
But no legal proceedings ensued against the generals. Meanwhile, Russia’s leaders began distancing themselves from Prigozhin, as did members of Putin’s inner circle like the Kovalchuk brothers, who previously
supported the mercenary leader in his
feud against St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov.
One source who spoke to Meduza said that Prigozhin went from being a “useful tool” to a “potential source of problems.” “Yevgeny has gone to another reality,” he concluded.
Yevgeny Prigozhin withdrew nearly all of Wagner Group’s fighters from Ukraine in preparation for his mutiny.
meduza.io
