War

What’s next for Wagner and Prigozhin as Putin rages over rebellion
Days after an aborted rebellion in Russia, much of the world’s attention has shifted to what’s next for the mercenary Wagner Group and its high-profile founder Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Publicly, the negotiated deal between Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin involved the Wagner chief’s exile to Belarus and the dropping of terrorism charges against him.

Yet experts say Prigozhin is far from safe, as Putin publicly fumes over the mutiny. And it’s unclear what the deal means for the future of Wagner, which has extensive holdings and influence across the world, particularly in developing countries in Africa, as well as ongoing operations in the Middle East and Latin America.
In televised addresses this week, Putin said the “majority of Wagner Group soldiers and commanders are also Russian patriots” and offered them a choice: either sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense or other Russian agency, return home, or go to Belarus.
“Everyone is free to decide on their own,” Putin said.

Those options will likely allow the group to remain intact — for now. However, Prigozhin’s continued involvement, or further acts of provocation, could change Putin’s equation.
David Salvo, the managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, said it was “hard to imagine” Prigozhin remaining in control, predicting he would either be assassinated or left to wither in exile.
“I don’t see how he retains influence without the company,” he said. “And it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Putin allows him to retain control over this massive operation because of how much influence and power he accrued.”

Salvo expects Wagner to be ”stripped for parts” and broken down into several different private military companies headed by Putin loyalists.
That could be in motion already as the Russian Defense Ministry said Wagner Group will begin to hand over its heavy weapons to the Kremlin’s military, per the agreement struck with Prigozhin.
Breaking apart Wagner would enable the Russian president to continue benefiting from Wagner operations across the globe — including on the frontline in Ukraine — and prevent the concentration of too much power under one figure, as happened with Prigozhin, Salvo added.

“One of the reasons why he was so quick to strike a deal, rather than jail or kill Prigozhin, is because the Russian military relies on the mercenaries. They need these guys as cannon fodder on the front lines. And not only that, they’re elite-performing cannon fodder,” he said.
“It’s to Putin’s advantage to get as many of these guys back to the front under a different flag as possible.”
Prigozhin’s short-lived uprising erupted after a long-festering feud between him and Russian military officials. The Wagner army rumbled unopposed for hundreds of miles from southern Russia toward Moscow before abruptly calling off the march.

Putin has since sought to reassert his control, calling the aborted mutiny “a stab in the back of our country and our people” during Monday’s address. “They wanted Russians to fight each other,” he said, without naming Prigozhin.
Prigozhin’s move into exile also calls into question his vast involvement in Russian commerce and politics, from natural resource exploitation, propaganda operations, and a catering business with millions worth of Kremlin contracts.
“Prigozhin is most likely going to take steps now to shore up his control of this entire business network,” Catrina Doxsee, an expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Hill.

She said Wagner and its related shell companies have been instrumental in expanding Russia’s influence and providing clear economic gains to the country, particularly in Africa.
The Wagner leader will not let go of his empire easily, setting the stage for a fight with Moscow and potential splintering, Doxsee said.
Putin may already be laying the groundwork to bury Prigozhin under corruption charges, as he has with other perceived rivals.

The Russian president held a meeting Tuesday with defense leaders at which he admitted funding Wagner Group, with Moscow paying nearly $1 billion to support the company from May 2022 to May 2023 alone.
Putin also said Prigozhin’s Concord catering company would be investigated for charging the government while being funded with another roughly $1 billion.
As for Prigozhin himself, he appears to have arrived in Belarus as part of the deal brokered by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko over the weekend, though he hasn’t been seen since he left a southern Russia military headquarters on Saturday.

Lukashenko announced Tuesday the mercenary chief’s arrival. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Tuesday the U.S. doesn’t “have any reason to doubt the announcement made by the government of Belarus.”
The consensus among Russian military bloggers, war analysts, and officials appears to be that Wagner Group is too important to give up, but tighter regulation and a change in leadership might be necessary.

Andrey Kartapolov, chairman of the State Duma defense committee, told the newspaper Vedomosti that lawmakers were working on legislation to exercise greater control over private military companies.
However, Kartapolov noted the Wager company is the most “combat ready” division of Russia’s fighting forces and that dissolving the company would be disastrous and benefit the western security alliance NATO.

He also said Prigozhin’s soldiers “did not do anything reprehensible” and were following orders, arguing it was best to “change leadership.”
“The one who raised the rebellion, he must answer,” Kartapolov said, while admitting that installing “someone there who will be more loyal, more specific, but whom the participants will respect and perceive is a difficult job.”
Experts have also speculated that Putin is unlikely to let Prigozhin leave the scene in peace.

“In terms of long-term safety, I think he does have a lot to worry about,” she said. “I don’t think that we’ll see him assassinated in the short term. I think that would be yet another sign of weakness for Putin to back down over the weekend, only to covertly assassinate Prigozhin shortly after.”
Instead, Doxsee predicted Russia could be setting Prigozhin up for a criminal case and show trial, using him as an example for Putin to assert his power over Wagner and deter any others who might look to challenge his power.

While Prigozhin has claimed wide support for the march on Moscow, it has also angered some hard-liners who previously supported his bloody efforts in Ukraine.

Prominent Russian blogger Alexander Kots wrote angrily that Prigozhin’s forces downed seven aircraft during the march.
“Six downed helicopters and one plane is not justice. Blocking Russian cities is not justice. Capturing military airfields is not justice,” Kots wrote. In another post, he predicted the downfall of Wagner. ”It is a pity that the story of the legendary military unit ends just like that.”

Fogdog said:

lol

Oh yeah. Practice two days each month in a National Guard uni, practicing in a tank. In about 400 years they might be a match to somebody who spent a 6 months inside a tank in combat.

Anyway, good for Putin to realize he has more to lose than a few kilometer in Donbas.

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He's talking more about the internal security police I think, the FSB, he will need a counter to the army and a regular coup after they are run out of Ukraine. Wagner is having their heavy weapons removed and can go home, sign up with the army or go to Belarus, I assume to help Lukashenko keep a lid on things there.

25 K troops removed from Ukraine and Russian morale in the toilet right when the Ukrainians are launching their offensive, meanwhile Vlad has to divert tanks and heavy equipment to for new internal security units.

printer said:

Click to expand...

uh-oh … wmd creep

cannabineer said:

What they need are T-16s

No, it's not. I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home.

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) clip with quote No, it's not. I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home. Yarn is the best search for video clips by quote. Find the exact moment in a TV show, movie, or music video you want to share. Easily move forward or backward...

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action figure set with T-16

Opinion: Victory for Ukraine could be closer than we thought

Ukraine Deploys Pontoon Bridges over Dnieper! | Explosions in Russian Rear Areas! | Ukraine Update

Just what Ukraine needs, a purge of the Russian high command in the middle of their offensive, these guys will be more worried about the FSB showing up to arrest them than the Ukrainians kicking their asses. Go full Stalin Vlad!

There is gonna be an even bigger shortage officers between Vlad at the top and Ukraine at the bottom and sometimes top, disposing of them. Most of their educated officer material left the country already, hundreds of thousands of young men who got their news online.

There goes one.....

Belarusian president says he convinced Putin not to ‘eliminate’ Wagner Group
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin not to “eliminate” the Wagner Group mercenary company during an armed rebellion over the weekend.

Lukashenko, who brokered the deal between Putin and Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin that prevented a civil war on the streets of Moscow, said Putin called him around 10 a.m. local time on Saturday morning as thousands of Wagner Group fighters under the command of Prigozhin were marching toward the Russian capital.

“The most dangerous thing, as I saw it, was not the situation itself, but its possible ramifications. That was the most dangerous part of it,” Lukashenko said Tuesday following a ceremony in the Belarusian capitol of Minsk. “I also realized that a tough decision was taken … to eliminate those involved.”

“I suggested that Putin should not rush to do it. I suggested that I talk to Prigozhin, his commanders,” Lukashenko continued.

Putin initially insisted it was “useless” to try and negotiate with Prigozhin, according to Lukashenko’s account of the conversation.


But Lukashenko said he would try to contact the mercenary chief and persuaded the Russian president that a “bad peace is better than any war,” he recounted.

Lukashenko said Tuesday that he reached Prigozhin around 11 a.m. on Saturday and found the Wagner boss “was completely euphoric.”

“During the first round we talked using only swear words for about 30 minutes. I analyzed it later. The number of swear words was ten times higher than that of normal words,” Lukashenko said.

According to Lukashenko, Prigozhin said he wanted to oust from power Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, and meet with Putin, a demand the Belarusian leader quickly shot down.

“You know Putin as much as I do. Secondly, he will not meet with you, he will not even talk on the phone with you in this situation,” Lukashenko claimed he told Prigozhin.

The Belarusian president says he conducted about seven rounds of talks between Putin and Prigozhin, who Lukashenko claimed was frantic that he would be “destroyed” by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Lukashenko said he told the Wagner chief his rebellion stood little chance of succeeding, while he informed the Russian president that, even if he successfully defeated Wagner Group, thousands of civilians could die in the clash.

With Wagner forces just 120 miles from Moscow, the deal was reached in which Prigozhin would be exiled to Belarus with guarantees of safety while Putin would drop terrorism charges against him.

“The turmoil was thus prevented. Dangerous events that might have taken place were reversed,” Lukashenko said. ““I must say it was painful for me to watch the recent developments in the south of Russia. Many of our citizens took them to heart as well.”

Lukashenko is a close ally of Putin who has been accused of authoritarianism and human rights abuses, and it’s unclear how honest his account of the story has been. However, Lukashenko’s role in negotiating the deal has been widely reported.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that Prigozhin wanted to capture Shoigu and Gerasimov and had amassed troops and equipment for days ahead of the execution of the plan. Prigozhin has for months accused the military leaders of fumbling the war effort in Ukraine, refusing to supply him with necessary equipment and of corruption.

Prigozhin was forced to hastily advance his plans on Friday after Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, opened a criminal case against him for inciting an armed rebellion. The mercenary leader captured a city in southern Russia before moving on Moscow on Saturday.

Russian Iskander missile destroys pizzeria in center of Kramatorsk Ten people killed, more than 50 injured
According to the latest information from Ukrainian authorities, at least ten people were killed in a missile strike on Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, on the evening of June 27. Two 14-year-old sisters and one 17-year-old girl are among the dead, says Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin.

Information on the number of victims varies: according to the Office of the Prosecutor General, 60 people were injured, while the Interior Ministry estimates that number is 61. Reportedly, an eight-month-old was also injured by the strike.

According to Kostin, Russian troops struck Kramatorsk with two Iskander missiles. Initially, it was reported that the strike was carried out by two S-300 missiles.

The main strike hit the center of Kramatorsk. Ria Pizza, a popular restaurant, was destroyed. Dozens of people were inside at the time. After the missile struck, a fire broke out. Eighteen high-rise buildings, 65 private homes, five schools, two kindergartens, a shopping center, a hotel, and other buildings were also damaged, says Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration . A second rocket hit a private home in the village of Bilenke on the outskirts of Kramatorsk, where, according to prosecutors, five local residents were injured.

Three citizens of Colombia, who were in a pizzeria at the time of the attack, were injured, BBC News Ukrainian reports, citing Aquanta Ucraina. They are politician Sergio Jaramillo, writer Hector Abad, and journalist Catalina Gomez. The trio were there to meet Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, who was injured and is in serious condition. Arnaud de Decker, a journalist from Brussels, was also in the pizzeria and tweeted about the explosion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the strike on Kramatorsk terror by Russian troops. “Each such manifestation of terror proves again and again to both us and to the world that Russia deserves only one thing based on the results of everything it has done – defeat and a tribunal, fair and legal trials against all Russian murderers and terrorists,” he said in a follow-up address on June 27.

After the missile strike on Kramatorsk, Telegram channel Ostorozhno, news reported that Russian media and Telegram channels supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine made claims that Ria Pizza was frequented by Ukrainian soldiers, foreign volunteers, and journalists. Propaganda outlet Readovka claimed that foreign mercenaries were allegedly in the establishment at the time of the attack.

The Security Service of Ukraine reported that “hot on the trail,” it had detained an agent of the Russian special services, who coordinated the strike on the cafe in the center of Kramatorsk.

The search and rescue operation continues. Rescuers admit that there may be people under the rubble. The Donetsk regional prosecutor’s office opened an investigation under the article on the violation of the laws and customs of war.

Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said Russian troops “do not strike civilian infrastructure.” “Strikes are carried out on facilities that are somehow connected to military infrastructure,” he said at a briefing with reporters.

The Russian Defense Ministry has yet to comment on the strike on Kramatorsk.

What he leaves behind Yevgeny Prigozhin owns and controls a vast network of ‘trolls,’ media outlets, and profitable businesses. This was his empire before he bet the farm on Wagner Group.
Yevgeny Prigozhin isn’t just the founder of the Wagner Group mercenary organization, and he’s not only the man who staged an armed rebellion last weekend. Prigozhin is also a billionaire who owns a variety of businesses — a fact that Vladimir Putin emphasized on Tuesday, June 27, when telling a group of Defense Ministry officers about Prigozhin’s vast earnings on state catering contracts. Journalists from the news outlet Bumaga in St. Petersburg, where most of Prigozhin’s assets are based, spoke to the billionaire’s local business partners to find out what is now happening with his non-mercenary companies. Meduza shares the following English-language adaptation of Bumaga’s story.

Yevgeny Prigozhin didn’t always advertise his leadership at Wagner. In fact, he denied any direct involvement in the mercenary group until well after it became Russia’s most visible fighting force in Ukraine. According to journalists at The Bell, the original idea for the organization belongs (ironically, in light of last weekend’s rebellion) to several high-ranking officers in the Defense Ministry.

It’s believed that Wagner Group cut its in teeth in eastern Ukraine, fighting alongside Moscow-backed separatists in the Donbas. Later, the mercenaries reportedly assassinated several prominent field commanders in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” when they refused to align with Moscow’s power vertical. Next, Wagnerites shipped out for operations in Syria and the Central African Republic.

In November 2022, after the veil slipped from Prigozhin’s leadership at Wagner Group, the “PMC Wagner Center” opened in St. Petersburg, in a 23-story building on Zolnaya Street. With apparent aspirations to become a sprawling incubator for pro-invasion projects, the center announced plans to make office space available at no cost to “patriotic” creators, designers, and IT specialists.

Over the next six months, the center welcomed dozens of new residents, including “z-bloggers,” a drone aviation school, the “Cyberfront-Z” movement, which coordinated writing pro-war comments on social media, and others. One group staged “master classes” in military education for orphans and “troubled teens,” using “trainers” with established ties to neo-Nazi groups, according to investigative journalists at The Insider.

A day of raids
On June 24, as Prigozhin’s armed convoy closed in on Moscow, multiple police groups raided the PMC Wagner Center in St. Petersburg. State investigators and officers from SWAT, the National Guard, and the Interior Ministry searched the center’s offices and confiscated office equipment. But, as of this writing, not one resident in the building has publicly severed ties with PMC Wagner Center (though the “Wagnerenok” youth club has since changed its name).

Anna Zamaraeva, who oversees PMC Wagner Center’s media and blogger production, also confirmed to Bumaga that no residents have terminated their membership at the center. “Since Monday [June 27], we’ve been working as usual in accordance with the Russian Federation’s applicable laws,” she said, adding that her colleagues will appeal to the authorities with an inventory list of everything seized over the weekend. Zamaraeva explained that the center believes it’s still perfectly legal to keep its ties to Yevgeny Prigozhin and his operations.

In April 2023, Prigozhin announced the opening of Wagner Group recruiting centers across St. Petersburg to be housed at one shooting range and four martial arts clubs. Sayd Tikhonov, the founder of one of those sports clubs, told Bumaga that neither Prigozhin’s rebellion nor Saturday’s police raids affected recruitment across the city. “Until the order comes down, of course, [we’ll keep recruiting at gyms],” he said. “So far, there’s been nothing. After all, nothing serious happened. They haven’t dissolved the organization [Wagner Group], and they haven’t banned it.”

Send in the trolls
A native of St. Petersburg, Yevgeny Prigozhin has deep ties to the region. Before he became the infamous mercenary leader who captured Bakhmut and staged an insurrection against Russia’s own military, Prigozhin gained notoriety abroad for his ties to the so-called Internet Research Agency. Better known as Russia’s “troll factory,” this group was responsible for the online interference in U.S. politics that led to the first Western sanctions against Prigozhin.

In 2019, Prigozhin’s “troll factory” empire expanded with the Patriot Media Group — an umbrella outfit for dozens of websites with names like “Economics Today,” “Politics Today,” and so on. Over the years, Patriot courted friendly ties to hundreds of small regional projects nationwide. Yevgeny Prigozhin headed the media group’s board of trustees until late May 2023, when he transitioned to a role as a deputy board member to focus more on the war in Ukraine.

Naturally, the “troll factory” also invested in promoting pro-invasion narratives. In March 2022, by Prigozhin’s own admission, he helped launch the Cyberfront-Z Telegram channel — a project devoted to bullying celebrities who criticize the war in Ukraine and demanding the cancelation of their performances in Russia. The group also spams comment sections online with pro-invasion remarks. Journalists at Fontanka have tied the channel’s employers to legal entities connected to Prigozhin.

An investigative report last fall published by the Dossier Center found that roughly 400 companies make up Prigozhin’s entire “troll factory.” These groups have received hundreds of millions of rubles in funding to flood social media with fake comments, to buy promotions on popular news and blogger channels, and even to plant bogus reports in legacy news outlets like the newspaper Kommersant.

An aspect of the “troll factory” schemes that receives very little attention abroad (perhaps because it is a local rivalry) is Prigozhin’s feud with St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov. The conflict grew more heated in 2021 when Prigozhin’s position in the region began to “weaken,” sources told Bumaga. More recently, the campaign by Prigozhin and his troll empire has escalated from mere criticism (about the governor’s snow-cleanup and trash-pickup efficiency, for example) to outright character attacks and legal efforts, including petitions demanding treason charges against Beglov.

As with his role at Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin didn’t acknowledge his control over “the trolls” relatively recently, in this case in February 2023, when he deemed it appropriate to declare that the group was necessary for “defending Russia’s information space from the obnoxious, aggressive propaganda of anti-Russian messaging by the West.”

On June 24, during Prigozhin’s armed rebellion, Russia’s federal censor blocked the websites and social media accounts of the publications that comprise the Patriot Media Group on the grounds that these outlets were “spreading incitements to join an armed rebellion.” That same day, the authorities raided the offices of several “newsrooms” under Prigozhin’s control.

Journalists at Bumaga have learned that the websites are still blocked, but the largest outlet in Prigozhin’s pocket — RIA FAN — already has a backup site up and running. It turns out that the publication anticipated its confrontation with the federal censor at least a month ago and registered the domain riafan.org on May 18, 2023.

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Where the money is made
There are six companies registered in Yevgeny Prigozhin’s name that have not already been dissolved. Three of these businesses are different legal entities for the Concord catering company. Prigozhin also serves as the director of the real estate company that legally manages the PMC Wagner Center and owns 49 percent of a film-distribution business. Additionally, he owns 80 percent of another property-leasing and -management firm.

Journalists at Verstka Media have also tied Prigozhin to several businesses not registered in his name that reported record profits in 2022. For example, Russockapital, which supplies food to schools and hospitals in Moscow, won more than 150 state contracts and earned 760 million rubles ($8.9 million) in profits. Reports at MBK Media, meanwhile, connect Prigozhin to a company called Verona, which made 750 million rubles ($8.8 million) on school catering deals in Moscow.

Prigozhin doesn’t do school catering in St. Petersburg, at least not anymore. Concord won a contract to supply food to 14 schools in the city in 2011, but that work ended after just one year. The company doesn’t even bid on these contracts anymore.

More than once, Prigozhin has tried to implement investment projects in St. Petersburg.

In 2021, the Megaline company (which has unofficial ties to Prigozhin) signed an agreement with the municipal investment committee to create a maritime industrial complex just outside the city. Prigozhin claims that he hoped to invest as much as 300 billion rubles ($3.5 billion) into St. Petersburg’s infrastructure.

Journalists have written that Prigozhin has offices at the Trezzini Palace Hotel in St. Petersburg, which he calls “his own hotel.” During Saturday’s rebellion, the authorities raided this property, too, seizing 4 billion rubles ($46.8 million) in cash (along with boxes of guns and apparently narcotics). (Prigozhin says the money was intended for Wagner Group soldiers.) In the past, Prigozin has claimed that he would like to rebuild the hotel, expanding into adjacent lots he’s acquired, but the project will have to wait until there’s a new governor, he says.

According to available information, not one of the billionaire’s investment ventures in St. Petersburg is currently in motion. The massive maritime industrial complex was reportedly given to another investor, and Prigozhin openly accuses Governor Beglov of sabotaging his other projects.

All in the family
There are also several assets registered in the names of Prigozhin’s wife and their two children. For example, the family owns property in a gated community outside St. Petersburg at Lake Lakhta. Records show that the Concord company managed the construction of the community’s 49 villas, some of which belong individually to Prigozhin, his wife Lyubov, their son Pavel, and their daughter Polina. Counted together, this real estate adds up to roughly 17,000 square meters (more than 180,000 square feet).

Prigozhin’s other daughter, Veronika, is the registered founder of a hotel not far from the Mariinsky Theater, while Pavel Prigozhin founded a business center located on the Sinopskaya Embankment.

The family owns other properties throughout St. Petersburg, as well. Some have old history, like a restaurant launched in 1996 where Prigozhin used to entertain and dine the city’s political elites. There’s more recent history, too, like a food court on University Embankment where a bombing in April 2023 killed “war correspondent” Vladlen Tatarsky. After that deadly attack, Prigozhin said he’d previously transferred control over the cafe to the pro-invasion Cyberfront-Z movement.