Dead Man Walking: Prigozhin's Mutiny

For those of you wondering what the hell is going on, trust me, nobody else knows much more than you do. 

A cheat sheet. 

Wagner Group was founded by a Slavic fundamentalist  and neo-Nazi knuckle-dragger named Dmitri Utkin, a former GRU spec ops tactical who later contracted out in Syria as private security.  Back-door finance courtesy of Yevgeny Prigozhin, who maintained deniability while Wagner recruited from Spetsnaz, airborne, and OMON militia assault teams, along with other dedicated special warfare units.  Using regular army logistics and support, Wagner deployed into Crimea and the Donbas, and then to South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Mali.  Often suspected of war crimes, their general M.O. in Africa was to corner the export market in a given natural resource.  Uranium and gold, for example, in Darfur.  Profit aside, this allowed Wagner to maintain the fiction of a private contractor and independent business entity, although it’s common knowledge they operated out of Putin’s hip pocket. 

Prigozhin maintained his distance from Wagner until the war in Ukraine, when it began to suit his purpose to take credit for successes the mainstream Russian military couldn’t claim.  The problem, obviously, is that Prigozhin began to believe his own press – or his own podcasts.  When his enemies in the defense establishment, Shoigu and Gerasimov, effectively engineered a coup against Wagner, by requiring private contractors be subordinated to the Army chain of command (and Prigozhin’s supposed patron Putin signed off on it), the handwriting was on the wall.  Prigozhin moved against the garrison in Rostov-on-Don, and redeployed mobile units toward Voronezh – and Moscow.  It looked like a show of strength, but it mostly served to show Prigozhin had lost touch with reality.  It’s like the guy who climbs out onto the ledge of a tall building and threatens suicide.  If they call your bluff, the only thing left to do is jump. 

I doubt if Prigozhin is dumb enough to take refuge in Minsk.  Lukashenko would happily send his ears to Putin on a string, brokering the truce be damned.  His other options are limited.  He can’t go to any Western capital; it would only be a matter of time before the Hague asked for his extradition.  The former Soviet republics are out, or anywhere that has diplomatic relations with Russia.  And the Kremlin has a long reach, look at Trotsky, or Alexander Litvinenko.  Maybe the Saudis, or the Emirates. 

That’s the trouble with being an apex predator who loses his nerve, or thinks himself safe.  There’s always somebody lurking, in the deep water.