Volodymyr Fesenko: Prigozhin Needed Formal Pretext For Incident With Brigade Commander Of Russian Army

Mercenaries move on from verbal skirmishes to physical actions.

Can it reach a full-fledged armed confrontation between the “Wagnerites” and the regular troops of the Russian Federation? Does Wagner PMC leader Yevgeny Prigozhin have a political future? How will the instability of the Putin regime affect Belarus?

Well-known Ukrainian political scientist, head of the Penta Center for Applied Political Research Volodymyr Fesenko answered these and other questions for the Charter97.org website.

— Head of the Wagner PMC Prigozhin announced the capture of a Russian lieutenant colonel, brigade commander of the Russian army during a shootout. How to evaluate this event? After all, in fact, without any powers, a high-ranking officer of the Russian army was detained.

— Prigozhin has special powers. He and his Wagner PMC are actually fighting outside the framework of Russian law. Let me remind you that in Russia there is a criminal article for mercenarism. You cannot legally create private military companies, but it exists. Moreover, they created it for wars abroad, but now it is fighting in Ukraine and publicly, really operates in Russia.

We see how Prigozhin behaves at the front, what he allows himself, how Wagner is being formed — he was given the opportunity to recruit prisoners outside the existing procedural legislation. They are actually released from criminal punishment, given the opportunity to fight, and then released, so Prigozhin feels unpunished. This is the first reason for what happened.

The second is the contradictions between Wagner PMC and Prigozhin on the one hand, and the Russian Armed Forces on the other. They treat each other with hostility. Last year, I read from a Russian expert that their military personnel hate Kadyrov and Prigozhin. For them, these are strangers who have special powers, receive everything at the highest level, and they are allowed everything. Military personnel are second-class people. The contradictions are not so much related to status as, I would say, to class. They perceive each other as people from different castes.

I would venture to suggest that people there hate each other more than Ukrainians. According to Prigozhin's statements, it is noticeable that he respects Ukrainians as worthy enemies. He treats Shoigu, Gerasimov and some other Russian military leaders with contempt and obvious antipathy. This is a very telling story.

The contradictions, which accumulated quite quickly during the war, began to manifest themselves last year, and now they have only become aggravated. The fact that, as Prigozhin said, mines were placed on the escape routes, fired at, became the formal reason for this incident with the brigade commander. The fact that this happened is a very symptomatic situation.

— Why?

— It shows that it is no longer just about verbal arguments, but about physical clashes. Who knows, there may be more in the future.

— Can it reach a full-fledged armed confrontation between the “Wagnerites” and the regular troops of the Russian Federation?

— I do not rule this out. With Prigozhin, this is already breaking through. In a recent sensational interview with Dolgov (Russian propagandist — edit.), he actually hinted that “we can go to Moscow” if needed. A formal and purely theoretical hint, it was not a threat, but it sounded. The incident with the brigade commander also showed that the leader of the Wagner perceives himself as something separate.

I think that Prigozhin left Bakhmut because he wants to save his army not for the war with Ukraine, but for the future struggle for power in Russia. There could be collisions, given the current contradictions. I do not rule out, even many Russian commentators write about this, that there may be an attempt by the military, the FSB, the broad anti-Prigozhin coalition to physically eliminate Prigozhin.

But the leader of the PMC can act accordingly. If Putin's power begins to weaken in Russia or something happens to him, then Prigozhin will inevitably enter into an open struggle for power, relying precisely on his power structures. Then there may be physical clashes between units of the Russian Armed Forces and Prigozhin's PMC.

— Does Prigozhin have a political future in the Russian Federation?

— According to Russian sources, Prigozhin's popularity is growing. By the way, Prigozhin's birthday was very stormy, in a skirmish with the “Kadyrovites”, which is also an interesting trend. The public assault on Prigozhin’s birthday on Wagner and himself by Kadyrov’s people, then a sharp response to the Kadyrovites by the military head of the Wagner PMC is another line of contradictions. Even last year, Kadyrov and Prigozhin were allies in the confrontation with the leadership of the Russian Armed Forces and the RF Ministry of Defense.

As for the ratings, according to polls by the Levada sociological center, Prigozhin is among the top 10 most famous Russian politicians in terms of the level of trust.

Some Telegram channels provide data from closed polls, where they asked about the level of support for certain Russian politicians. According to them, Prigozhin is in the top five.

Russians supporting Prigozhin are supporters of the war party, people with anti-elite sentiments, who are especially dissatisfied with the actions of the Russian authorities now.

The latest events in the Belgorod region have given a new reason for dissatisfaction and criticism of the Russian authorities, and Prigozhin uses this, becomes the mouthpiece of this criticism, which works for his popularity. He feels it and for him it is like a drug. Prigozhin likes to express such sentiments; apparently, he is a rather vain person. He is getting carried away to some extent.

Judging by the discussion that has unfolded in Russian Telegram channels, a new problem is already being in focus there: not what to do with Ukraine, but what to do with Prigozhin. They are considering different options. He is loyal to Putin, is his soldier, but this soldier is already playing by his own rules. This is a very peculiar and controversial character with his media and political activity, and even more so he has his own army — this is actually a threat to the normal functioning of the Putin regime in its former form. It seems to be Putin's tool, but at the same time he is already acting according to his own rules, which is already beginning to affect the stability of the Putin regime.

— How will this instability of the Putin regime affect Belarus?

— If a political crisis begins in Russia, this will lead to a sharp weakening of Lukashenka's positions. There is China, but it is far away. Lukashenka relies heavily on Putin's economic and military support. The beginning of the political crisis in the Russian Federation, I emphasize, will lead to economic and social problems in Belarus and there will be an effect of a sharp weakening of the Lukashenka regime.

If the factor of Lukashenka’s health, which is already manifesting itself, adds up, then the combination of these two factors will simply inevitably raise the question of changing the political regime in Belarus.

If Russia drastically weakens, then one of the main props of the Lukashenka regime will collapse.