CIVIL WAR: Russia Under Invasion By Wagner Group, As Putin Orders Criminal Case Against Rebels

Russia’s Federal Security Service has stated  that Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, had incited an “armed rebellion” after Prigozhin—who accused the Russian military of attacking one of the group’s camps.

The Wagner Group subsequently claimed control over Russian military facilities in Voronezh and Rostov—Russia’s logistical hub for its invasion of Ukraine—on Saturday, according to CNN.

Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch with previously close ties to Putin, has increasingly challenged the Russian leader’s authority and is seen by some as angling to challenge Putin’s leadership.

Just this week, he accused Russian military leaders of lying to the public over Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine, suggesting that Ukraine and NATO posed no threat to Russian national security, according to the Wall Street Journal.

 

The group also claimed Russian soldiers shot Wagner paramilitaries in Bakhmut earlier this month, after Prigozhin—who threatened to have his troops leave the city—said “fat cat” Moscow failed to support its frontline troops.

 

Prigozhin then threatened to march some of his 25,000 troops on Moscow—which prompted Putin to warn his country Saturday of a possible civil war—invoking the 1917 attempted coup that led to the Bolsheviks taking over Russia’s government—with Putin vowing to “not let this happen again” (by later Saturday, Prigozhin said he had called off the march on Moscow to avoid Russian casualties).

 

Most observers are calling the conflict, as the New York Times put it, “the most dramatic challenge to Mr. Putin’s rule since he was named Russia’s acting president on Dec. 31, 1999.”

Putin ,however has ordered troops to launch criminal case against Wagner Group over incitement to armed rebellion.

 

 

Also,Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested the Wagner Group is exposing Russia’s “full-scale weakness.” An Eastern European government official told the Wall Street Journal that a conflict between Russia and the Wagner Group makes Russia “less dangerous for the rest of the world.”

 

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said the rebellion could “cause irreparable damage” to Putin’s leadership, according to the Associated Press.

 

 

KEY BACKGROUND

Prigoshin’s Wagner Group—designated as a “transnational criminal organization” by the U.S.—has been linked with Moscow in repeated military conflicts, including Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and “exerted influence on behalf of Moscow in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mali and Mozambique,” according to the Times.