Prigozhin, the spokesperson for the ‘Private Military Group’ Wagner, in the West also identified as ‘Putin’s Chef’, announced the withdrawal of Wagner units from Bakhmut by Wednesday. He didn’t mince any words while pointing fingers. The reason provided is that Wagner is receiving insufficient support from the ‘Ministry of Defense’ of the Russian Federation, resulting in mounting losses, as they face five times as many Ukrainian soldiers compared to their own current strength. Western media jumped on it, since this is encouraging news for their ‘Project Ukraine’, as well as confirmation that the Russians are struggling to keep up with demand of ammo as well.
Prigozhin has been highly visible as the man ‘behind’ Wagner, although the ownership structure is not entirely clear. This is making it difficult to know where the organization stands in relation to Putin and his government. Previously Putin himself is said to have intervened in conflicts between the regular army and these ‘for profit’ mercenaries, and the importance of Wagner in this war for the Russians, especially in and around Bakhmut, has been highly visible. Many commentators speculated that Prigozhin himself has set his eyes on replacing Putin as the head of state, but if that is true, I doubt that this latest move is going to give him credits among the Russian population.
On the other hand, Prigozhin appears to be popular among Russian ‘hawks’, who feel strongly that Putin bungled this war with Ukraine when he should have crushed the army in the very first week, unleashing ‘Shock and Awe’ like NATO would, showing them who is ‘boss’. Allowing the ‘Collective West’ to prop up their ‘client-regime’, and refusing to touch Zelensky, providing him with one army after another as Ukraine burned through men and equipment, is considered a serious mistake in those circles, and the echo of that sentiment can be heard among military commentators in the West as well, including those who still believe that Russia will emerge victorious anyway.
My own ‘take’ on the Russian strategy is that all of it was deliberate, for various reasons. First and foremost, Putin did not want to fall into the trap of getting bogged down in Ukraine like the Soviet Union allowed itself to be trapped in Afghanistan in the eighties, fighting Al Qaeda and associated forces in a proxy-war, with the US and Saudi Arabia setting up Al Qaeda for this purpose. He wanted to make sure that those areas conquered would be inhabited by ‘Culturally Russian’ people, not resisting occupation, but welcoming it as a liberation. Apart from any obvious military need to straighten the frontline, and reduce the number of troops required by withdrawing behind the river Dnieper, so much easier to defend, they also took their time to allow the civilian population to make a choice to move into Russian occupied land, or stay and wait for the Ukrainian forces. Only after that operation was completed, they orderly withdrew without any losses. Another argument is that Russia had to take care not to estrange itself from China, and stick to the program of making sure that the ‘New Boss’ would not be as bad as, or worse than the ‘Old Boss’. To recreate a Multipolar world order, as agreed upon, military might would have to be limited to understandable responses to challenges from the Western Hegemon.
Now, apart from Russians with dreams of restoring former grandeur, if needed by subduing other people and countries, those who do everything for profit are actually identical to similar groups in the ‘Collective West’, and therefore a product of the ‘Financial Capitalist’ system generating this pipe-dream of a Unipolar world. Nothing reminds us more of feudal rule than armies killing and maiming for money. Although the emerging Dutch republic used them eagerly back in the sixteenth and seventeenth century to fight the Spanish king, hiring Germans and British troops, paid for by rich merchants. That war took eighty years to reach a peace treaty. More than a few of those hired hands never left the Netherlands, and one German family made it to the house delivering crowned kings and queens to this day, with some ups and downs. The individual, or group of individuals with the most money will get the better army. Using Wagner has always been debatable, considering what Putin and Xi are aiming for. Various arguments in favor of using Wagner presented itself when a quick settlement, as Putin hoped to achieve, did not materialize. Building a bigger army required time, and patience to train the soldiers properly. Wagner was readily available to fill the gap. Moreover, using ‘inmates’ to some extent avoided the rise of objections from ordinary civilians to ‘body bags’. Not a very ethical argument, but practical. The use of ‘Private Military Companies’ by the ‘Collective West’, from the French ‘Foreign Legion’ to various mainly American ‘PMC’s, reflects the very same thinking.
Russia as a country is ill served by a return to ‘Financial Capitalism’, so whatever happens, Wagner will not be allowed to run the show. Nor is it going to survive a power grab by those ultra nationalist forces dreaming of restoring former grandeur by military means, and ‘retaking’ territory lost when the Soviet Union, or the Tsarist autocracy, with close family ties to the Dutch Royal family, disintegrated. Unless there is a proper cause, such as in Ukraine, where the ‘Collective West’ organized the suppression of ‘Culturally Russian’ people through a coup, and demoting them to second rate citizens without rights or representation. For Putin and his government this is a ‘tightrope’, even though a vast majority of the people is still supporting him, and the ‘Neocons’ are doing everything within their might to make him lose his balance. It really doesn’t matter to them if Ukraine, and/or Europe get destroyed in the process. Does Prigozhin, and the other owners of Wagner understand this? I have my doubts, but they cannot be trusted blindly to do what is best for Russia and the Russian people, or this concept of restoring a Multipolar world. However, within Wagner there will be plenty of quite ordinary Russians who are bound to question the wisdom of abandoning Bakhmut to help Prigozhin and the other owners of this company to take over political power in Russia and reestablish a ‘Corporatocracy’.
Another thought that occurred to me, is that luring Ukraine into taking advantage of the announced withdrawal might be a trap, or an attempt to derail the planned offensive elsewhere, if the Ukrainian military and political leadership will be tempted to change its plans, and move back tot the ‘meat grinder’ which they valued so much over the last couple of months. For this twist it is not necessary that Prigozhin himself has been informed about it, with him consciously playing a role. If I understand correctly what happened earlier, when Prigozhin ran afoul with the ‘Ministry of Defense’, it was that Putin explained to him that he was not interested in a ‘War of Conquest’. This underscores that Prigozhin is not ‘in the loop’, and only a ‘hired hand’, and that he has no say in how the war is conducted. By the way, similar tensions have been reported on the Ukrainian side as well, with ‘volunteers’ telling their commanders to ‘shove it’. This is different, as Prigozhin is not a soldier himself, and never was. It could be that he is indeed relaying what his soldiers are telling him, but that is not a given.
Non of this precludes that a far more benign explanation is the correct one. That nobody is lying, and that Prigozhin has every right to complain, either because of a logistics mismatch, short supply to the distribution hubs from the production facilities, or some corrupt individual ‘skimming off the top’ and holding soldiers on the frontlines hostage. Even a very real dislike within the Russian military for Prigozhin, resulting in sabotage of his operations, cannot be excluded. One responsible general was ‘relieved of his duties’ recently, for reasons unknown, but if he was bad at what he did, then why is he now touring Bakhmut, with rumors that he will take over at the helm of Wagner? Meanwhile Wagner isn’t simply pulling out so the Ukrainian forces can take back the ruins of what used to be Bakhmut, if it does. Regular Russian forces will relieve the Wagners. Some in the West are convinced that those Russian soldiers want only one thing: Go home, and return the Donbas to Ukraine, and everything else they care to take. We’ll see about that.
Meanwhile everybody is speculating about what these drones targeting the Kremlin were supposed to achieve? Larry Johnson came out with an assessment that it had to be some kind of US operation, rather than Zelensky inviting the Russians to kill him. Alex Krainer is suggesting that it might be because Zelensky got off the leash when he called Xi Jinping without authorization. Borrell, the unelected official transmitting statements handed to him by ‘higher ups’, whoever they may be, chimed in that this Chinese diplomat sent to explore the possibility to a settlement, would achieve nothing unless all of Ukraine’s demands would have been met, which has to be understood as NATO’s demands, Zelensky’s handler. Johnson added as a thought that Zelensky’s government is most likely stuffed with Russian spies, so leveling the buildings Zelensky occupies would kill their own assets, and achieve nothing. Meanwhile various ‘experts’ in the Netherlands and Germany were raging over ‘leaks’ which had exposed the visit of Zelensky to those countries, while at least one observer felt that Zelensky looked nervous since those attacks on the Kremlin. Meanwhile Alexander Mercouris said that it was the official policy of the US not to kill heads of state. I don’t know where he got that from, but there is a *very* long list of presidents, prime-ministers, envoys and ‘up and coming politicians’ who were killed, or barely survived, with the Cuban Fidel Castro being the ‘cat with nine lives’ in that little black book. And I wouldn’t want to feed all the people who are convinced that both John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert were assassinated by people within the US government, using ‘patsies’.
Against this backdrop, the Russians are preparing to relocate the civilian population of the Zaporizhzhia area they occupy, to shield them from the expected hostilities in this part of the world, underscoring once more that they are not expecting the military to hold on to terrain at all cost, but to find ways to grind the Ukrainian army down, at minimal cost to themselves. Mark Sleboda, a very insightful Russian commentator, talking to Brian Berletic, expressed fear that Ukraine would circumvent the prepared fortifications, going around it from the Kherson area, like the Germans went around the Maginot line at the start of the Second World War, and took France by surprise. He also shared with the viewers that he felt strongly that Prigozhin was a useful ‘clown’ used to lure the Ukrainians to go back to Bakhmut, as he said Medvedev, the former highly liberal Russian president, now talking as if he is a reborn Zhirinovsky, has a similar role. Obscuring the playing field. Sleboda is also expecting the war to continue forever, as NATO will pump Ukraine while Russia refuses to confront NATO directly. Orwell, right? Well, we’ll have to see if the people of the ‘Collective West’ will go along with that. But I do recommend that long video at the New Atlas on YouTube if you want to understand what this looks like from the Russian perspective.
The above underscores that I’m in no position to tell you what is true, and what isn’t. That is on purpose, and I feel strongly that people who know as much as I do, or less, should stay away from offering guidance and firm conclusions, because the media implying them, or seeking their ‘expert’ advise, are expecting just that. But human lives are at stake. This is no video game.