Yevgeny Prigozhin apparently getting killed on the same day it emerged that Gen Sergei Surovikin had been relieved of his command of Russia’s air force means the two most effective leaders in the first phase of the Ukraine war are now both gone, their removal a victory of sorts for the old guard at the Kremlin.
The Wagner group, headed by Prigozhin, led the capture of Bakhmut, Russia’s only battlefield gain so far this year, while it was his ally Surovikin, in his short period of overall command in Ukraine, who began building the defensive fortifications that are seen as so important to the invader’s position today.
However, the conduct of the invasion has changed since the fall of Bakhmut and Prigozhin’s brief, failed rebellion at the end of June. Wagner’s 15,000 strong light infantry force has been absent from the battle since late May, and after the rebellion has been effectively broken up.
Surovikin, already demoted from overall command, has been out of commission and possibly imprisoned since June, given his close relationship with Prigozhin and his presence in Rostov, where the short lived Wagner march to Moscow began.
In other words, Russia’s military command in Ukraine had already consolidated around veteran defence minister Sergei Shoigu, and chief of staff Valery Gerasimov, several months ago.
It would be a mistake to write them off. While Ukraine’s counter offensive is continuing to make slow progress on the southern Zaporizhzhia front and even in the east around Bakhmut, the Russians are showing they are not just in defensive mode.
At the beginning of August, Russian forces launched another artillery-led offensive aimed at Kupiansk, on the northern part of the eastern front, and from there south towards Lyman. Territorial gains have been modest, a couple of miles in the middle of the month, but Ukraine has been forced to shore up its lines.
Russia has also improved its military effectiveness as the war has dragged on, mostly on the defensive side. Its dense minelaying, which has blunted Ukraine’s advances, and its anti-drone electronic warfare forces that have meant Kyiv’s cash strapped military have had to constantly innovate are just two examples.
Whether Moscow’s offensive performance has improved is less clear, but the sector around Kupiansk does have the advantage of being close to Russia and it may prove easier to resupply there than in the south or Crimea, where logistics targets are being hit with British and French Storm Shadow missiles.
The elimination of Prigozhin also helps, for the moment, to shore up unity in Moscow, central to Russia’s war effort. Orysia Lutsevych, a deputy director with the Chatham House thinktank, said: “How will this war end? What happens domestically in Russia is equally important as what happens on the battlefield”.
Prigozhin’s brief abortive mutiny in June was the one moment in the past 18 months when Ukrainians thought the invasion of their country might be halted. The Wagner boss was the only significant Russian political figure with an independent profile of the Kremlin, and for a moment looked as if he might march into Moscow.
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Remarkably, Prigozhin was not arrested afterwards. Instead, as part of a deal struck with president Vladimir Putin, it appeared he might go into exile in Belarus, or at least avoid publicity. But his appearance at an Africa summit at the Kremlin and a video released this week of the warlord apparently in the Sahel, calling for recruits, showed he thought he could continue to be a player.
Allowing him to rebuild his position would always be a threat. Prigozhin, after all, was the man who criticised the war in Ukraine as being started by a “clan of oligarchs” during the revolt and dismissed the idea that Kyiv had attacked Russia.
Few expect the Wagner operation to remain in Europe. A rump in Belarus is reported, by Ukraine’s National Resistance Centre, to be packing up to head back to Russia, although Minsk’s security forces are trying to stop them. Their presence had a nuisance value, forcing Poland and Lithuania to step up border security, but there was no real prospect of an attack on a Nato member state.
But the problem for Moscow is that, while it may be possible to eliminate Prigozhin and his allies, and break up his paramilitary group, it will be harder to eradicate what made Wagner popular in parts of Russian society. Russia’s remote elite stand in sharp contrast to Prigozhin’s direct style on social media.
Lutsevych argues that pro-Wagner sentiment, and populist criticisms of the war in Ukraine, are now likely to go underground. “Putin will have to keep watching his back for traitors within the military, and that distracts from the war,” she said.
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