The end of June marked the second anniversary of the Wagner Group’s ride to Moscow, an operation that could have fundamentally changed the course of Russia, but ended with the liquidation of Yevgueni Prigozhin and Wagner’s leaders. Sergio Caride Escribano, a specialist in military history and geopolitics, has published “The Wagner Group. Putin’s mercenaries”, a book that helps to understand how an ex-convict like Prigozhin became the leader of a huge mercenary army and one of the strong men of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. We talk about this and other topics in this interview.
Why did you write a book about the Wagner group?
In 2022, while I was at the military academy and in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I started collecting information about what was going on. I gathered so much data that I reached an agreement with a publishing house to publish a book about Ukraine, which has just come out, and we also prepared a shorter book about the Wagner group, which I had a lot of information about, which came out just when Yevgeny Prigozhin is killed.
Prigozhin’s story is truly incredible, a petty criminal who becomes Putin’s chef and ends up being one of the most powerful men in Russia. It seems that the Kremlin runs like a mafia.
The reality is that Russian politics looks like a mafia. There is a highly recommended book, “Putin’s Men” by Catherine Belton, which analyzes Putin’s rise to power through his alliances with mafias in St. Petersburg and Moscow, relating to criminal networks that had been managed in the past by the KGB. Thus, Prigozhin’s rise from crime to the seats of power in the Kremlin is not uncommon in Russia.
Prigozhin was a criminal, sentenced to ten years in prison and released in 1990. After his release from prison, he decided to set up street food stalls in St. Petersburg and ended up setting up a chain of restaurants that began to attract important people. It is there where he meets Vladimir Putin and they strike up a friendship that opens the doors to the highest spheres, becoming the chef of the banquets in the Kremlin and, later, an important businessman.
How was Wagner born?
In 2009 the Russian military intelligence (GRU) already had mercenary groups and private companies abroad in the service of Russian companies. In 2013, a lieutenant colonel of the Spetsnaz, Dimitry Utkin, by the way, of neo-Nazi ideology (he was tattooed with all kinds of Nazi symbols), retires from the special forces and joins the “Moran security group”, later joining the “Slavonic Corps”, a mercenary group of about 300 members assisting the Syrian government against the Islamic State. The group suffered a severe defeat in the battle of Al Sukhnah and the few tens of survivors are grouped around Utkin, and, from that moment, they start to be known as Wagnerites because Utkin’s war nickname was “Wagner”, so the name of the group is supposed to come from there.
Utkin meets Prigozhin, who owns several oil and resource exploiting companies in Africa, in 2014, and they decide to set up a private military company, thus the Wagner group is born. It is then supposed to be Prigozhin who puts the group in contact with Putin, and I say supposed because, although we now have a lot of information, until 2022 there was no clear evidence about its existence: There were decorations to non-military personnel, such as Utkin, for their work in the Donbas; a photo of Prigozhin, Utkin and Putin together; photographs of a base near Rostov-on-Don, in a town called Molkino, which served as a Wagner recruiting center; the death of three Russian journalists who were investigating the Wagner group; reports of mercenary units in Syria, etc. Of course, Russia always denied its existence.
Did Wagner play an important role in the Donbas before the full-scale invasion?
Yes, and it is known that in the Crimean operation there were Wagnerite operatives doing the same tasks as Russian special forces. They were also active in the Donbas and were a key player in the Ukrainian defeat in the battle of Debaltseva in 2015. In addition to fighting, they trained pro-Russian forces and provided logistical support.
Wagner’s other major battlefront is Africa. What is Wagner doing there?
Wagner is deployed in Africa for Russia’s geopolitical interest to remove Western influence in the continent, and to obtain resources (gold, uranium, lithium, oil, gas, rare earths and minerals) and influence to the detriment of countries such as France or other European countries. Wagner becomes the armed wing of Russian geopolitical interest and is present in Burkina Fasso, Libya, Sudan, Central African Republic, Madagascar, Mali, Niger and Mauritania to protect Russian companies that are exploiting the resources of these countries. Many of these companies belonged to Prigozhin and their profits also benefited Wagner.
There are reports of all kinds of barbarities committed by Wagner in their fight against insurgent and terrorist groups. However, they seem to have the support of much of the population, in Central African Republic there is a statue showing Wagnerites protecting civilians and last year a statue was erected to Prigozhin and Utkin.
In exchange for its resources, Russia has offered security to these countries by displacing the Europeans, and for many Africans Wagner represents the idea of security previously offered by Western countries. Russia is winning this battle and we are not realizing it, and it has taken practically all of Africa from under our noses. On the other hand, Russia is responsible for all kinds of human rights violations, killings of civilians, mass executions, etc. The UN and Human Rights Watch have wanted to investigate these facts, but Russia has vetoed their investigation in the Security Council.
When does Prigozhin start to become a problem for the Russian government?
Wagner became very popular on Russian Telegram channels because people realized that they played a much better role than ordinary Russian army forces. Wagner consisted of a very hard core with many years of experience in Africa and then in Ukraine, so they are the ones who win battles, while the regular troops fail again and again. This is the beginning of the rivalry between Wagner and the Russian Ministry of Defense. In Bajmut, this rivalry comes to a head when Prigozhin accuses the army of not sending them ammunition and allowing his men to die by the thousands.
Russia clearly doesn’t care too much about the lives of its soldiers, but the cost of Bajmut is enormous, even by Kremlin standards. Prigozhin releases a video in which he says his forces have suffered 20,000 dead.
Yes, the figure is huge, but after the fall of the city, Prigozhin begins to believe he can defeat his internal enemies. However, they react to limit his power and the Minister of Defense, Sergey Shoigu, demands from Prigozhin that the Wagner fighters sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense, which in practice means the disappearance of the group. This move by Shoigu will accelerate the rebellion.
Doesn’t the fact that Russia was so dependent on a mercenary army or mass recruitment in prisons undermine the idea of the second best army in the world?
Of course, Russia was always selling that it had modernized, but it is still the same old Soviet army: corrupt, huge and ungovernable. It is true that there is a core that has modernized, but with many structural flaws. When that post-Soviet army faced a Ukrainian army that had been westernized since 2014, after having a really bad time in the Donbas war, we saw the reality of what the Russian army was.
If Prigozhin had come to Moscow, do you think he could have put Putin in check?
Wagner’s cavalcade lasts one day. They leave the Donbas and take Rostov militarily with tanks, from there, with trucks and light vehicles, they go to Voronez and then to Moscow. It is true that they do not meet any resistance and it seems obvious that they have a lot of popular support, because for the majority of the population the Wagnerites are the ones who are winning the war in Ukraine. But Prigozhin does not seek to attack Putin, but wants to warn him and denounce the incompetence of the Ministry of Defense. However, I do not believe that Wagner’s convoy would have been enough to attempt an effective seizure of power and for that reason a negotiation is initiated with the Belarusian president as mediator in which Prigozhin’s exile is agreed, which will end with his death and that of the leadership of the Wagner group.
After the death of Prigozhin and Utkin, what has happened to the Wagner group?
Wagner members have had to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense, so they have been integrated into units of the Russian army. It is also not known how many Wagnerites are left, although in Ukraine, after Bajmut, their number was quite limited. In Africa, the Wagner commanders were eliminated and replaced by army commanders, and they have continued to perform the same tasks they had been doing since their arrival on the continent under the name of “Africa Corps”. The mercenaries now protect companies that no longer belong to Prigozhin, but to the Kremlin’s power network.
