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“Spiders in the Bank”: Prigozhin vs. Shoigu

In Russia, the scandal between the founder of Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s cook”, and the leadership of the Russian Department of Defense does not subside.
Prigozhin has already issued two consecutive messages with claims to the Ministry of Defense and personally to the head of the department, Sergei Shoigu, accusing the army of keeping PMC units fighting in Ukraine on a starvation ration, deliberately supplying them with ammunition in the The right amount. The businessman assessed this as an attempt to destroy his structures and equated it with betrayal.
Previously, the United States had recognized the Wagner PMC as a “transnational criminal organization” and imposed new sanctions on a number of individuals and companies associated with the Wagner PMC and Yevgeny Prigozhin.As White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, the United States will “work tirelessly to identify, destroy, expose and prosecute” those who aid the “Wagnerians.”
“The Chief of the General Staff and the Minister of Defense distribute orders right and left, which say that the Wagner PMC must not only not give ammunition, but also not help with air transport”, says Prigozhin.
A number of videos have also been posted on the network, where PMC mercenaries obscenely characterize the actions of Russian army leaders and even defiantly shoot portraits of senior military officials from a light machine gun, including including Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
“All this speaks of the precariousness and fragility of authoritarianism”
The nature of the conflict between Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Defense Department is interdepartmental, according to Pavel Luzin, a political scientist and visiting scholar at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. In his opinion, Prigozhin is not an independent personality, but is under the direct control of one of the special services and is financed from the Russian budget.
“PMC mercenaries exist as a counterweight to the military along with the security forces,” he added in an interview with the media Russian Service. – In general, such a fragmentation of military power is typical of authoritarian regimes. And this fragmentation ends up harming authoritarian systems. It is not the names that are important here, but the systemic nature of what is happening. After all, Prigozhin is a money leader and administrator, he does not plan mercenary operations and does not command them on the battlefield.
In Russia, there is no personalist regime, only its imitation, Pavel Luzhin also noted, explaining why Putin does not interfere in the situation and restore order. According to him, the Russian president has not personally controlled “everything and everything” for a long time.
“In the defined area of ​​​​responsibility, Prigozhin, like Kadyrov, was given a certain freedom of hands,” he said. – Only all this has little to do with the structure of the modern state. In order to solve the problems that cannot be solved within the framework of the existing institutions, the (Russian) authorities opt for partial deinstitutionalisation. All of this speaks to the precariousness and fragility of authoritarianism, which has lost the ability to play by its own rules.
The criminalization of mercenaries is almost inevitable, and they will also participate in local power clashes inside Russia, the political scientist predicted.
Failed Kremlin Experiment
The story with Prigozhin and his PMC, if we talk about its purely military aspect, was a kind of Kremlin experiment, in turn, thinks military-political expert Prague professor Yuri Fedorov. According to him, the experiment was to try to create a kind of army corps of penalized criminals and mercenaries, to test it in the war in Ukraine and see what happens.
“If successful, this structure could be transformed into another center of power already inside the country and with its help try to neutralize to some extent the influence of the military command”, specified the interlocutor of media. – Not to replace it, but how to create a competitor for it, so that it is easier to manipulate the two. Here is such a calculation, I believe, could be.
But the Wagnerians in Ukraine could not achieve serious military successes, Yuriy Fedorov stressed: “They never took Bakhmut, Soledar eventually had to be taken by paratroopers. The experiment therefore failed. Prigogine’s personal ambitions overlap with all of this. He began to claim political influence, making a number of relevant statements. Of course, this caused discontent in the Kremlin. Finally, if I understood correctly, part of Putin’s entourage had the idea that the emergence of a poorly controlled private army could undermine the state’s monopoly on violence.
It seems that the leadership of the Ministry of Defense raised the issue bluntly and demanded that Prigozhin be removed from the political arena, the expert claims. It seems to him that now the military wants to integrate the remnants of the Wagner Group into their structures, almost completely resubordinating the PMCs to the General Staff and command of the so-called “SVO”.
“Prigozhin, of course, does not like this very much, and he cries out for help.” Putin, if he supports Prigozhin, somehow imperceptibly and weakly. Thus, the founder of the PMC risks losing in a conflict with the military. I think it’s better for him to go somewhere in Africa, away from sin, otherwise you can end up in a car accident, ”Yuri Fedorov summed up.
This conflict was staged from the start and was the result of the Kremlin’s unprincipled policies, says Russian opposition politician Leonid Gozman. According to him, Prigozhin was allowed to create his structures precisely as an alternative to traditional state organizations.
“All is just according to the laws of thieves”
“Therefore, PMC conflict with the Department of Defense and other government agencies was inevitable,” he says. – Moreover, Prigozhin promised results to the “owner” (Putin). Here, they say, we will now sweep away all opponents in Ukraine, like dust from our shoes. But this did not happen, although he threw countless numbers of prisoners (illegally recruited from the colonies) to death. That’s what he has to pay for. All is fair according to the laws of thieves.
At the same time, Leonid Gozman agrees that Prigozhin will lose in the current conflict. Because he is just a brazen bandit and is opposed by the criminal system, the politician explained.
According to the US government, around 40,000 criminals were sent to war in Ukraine as part of the PMCs, who were serving prison terms, but granted amnesty by decree of President Putin. At least 9,000 of them died.

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