2y ago

ISW's analysis of Wagner's (halted) advance on Moscow

www.understandingwar.org Institute for the Study of War

The Kremlin announced late on June 24 that Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko negotiated a deal under which Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin will travel to Belarus without facing criminal charges in Russia; some portion of Wagner Group

Some key takeaways :

The Kremlin struggled to cohere an effective rapid response to Wagner’s advances, highlighting internal security weaknesses likely due to surprise and the impact of heavy losses in Ukraine.

Putin unsurprisingly elected to back the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and its ongoing efforts to centralize control of Russian irregular forces (including Wagner) over Prigozhin.

The Lukashenko-brokered agreement will very likely eliminate Wagner Group as a Prigozhin-led independent actor in its current form, although elements of the organization may endure under existing and new capacities.

Prigozhin likely gambled that his only avenue to retain Wagner Group as an independent force was to march against the Russian MoD, likely intending to secure defections in the Russian military but overestimating his own prospects.

The optics of Belarusian President Lukashenko playing a direct role in halting a military advance on Moscow are humiliating to Putin and may have secured Lukashenko other benefits.

The Kremlin now faces a deeply unstable equilibrium. The Lukashenko-negotiated deal is a short-term fix, not a long-term solution, and Prigozhin’s rebellion exposed severe weaknesses in the Kremlin and Russian MoD.

31 comments

The whole thing was so weird
- Agreed. Seems so strange how they just withdrew.
  
  It's almost like the dog that caught the car and had no idea what to do. I assume they expected resistance and didn't actually want to coup d'etat, just make a point. Crazy.
  
  They had no option but to withdraw. The gamble was that the military would support them and that didn't happen. At that point there really weren't any options left.

What if the coup was actually successful and there will be a power transfer? Nobody half asses a coup and lives to tell the tale
- That's the real question, people going to be vanishing
  
  Prigozhin isn't stupid - I doubt he would have stopped without a good reason. They would have taken moscow if they went for it. My personal theory is that there was a palace revolution that we're not privvy to.
  Nothing about this, with the information that we have makes sense tbh. Only reason he'd stop is if he was certain he wouldn't have been suicided. That certainly indicates a shift of power in Kremlin but as to what actually happened we can only speculate. I think it's telling we didn't hear Putin have an adress yet.
  
  People who are paid mercenaries with black hearts... Yeah I don't think the world will be a worse place without them. :)
  Only in movies these people are made to be heroes.

tl;dr:
ISW will cover subsequent reports in the June 25 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. Russian sources widely voiced concerns that the rebellion could disrupt Russian forces' ability to defend against Ukrainian counteroffensives, but many milbloggers asserted that Russian forces are continuing to repel Ukrainian attacks. Prigozhin attempted to justify his armed rebellion by accusing the Russian MoD - namely Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov - of causing irreversible Russian losses on the battlefield and for striking a Wagner base, but notably did not criticize Putin. Russian milbloggers claimed that intensified Ukrainian assaults and decreased Russian artillery fire contributed to Ukrainian advances south of Orikhiv during the night of June 23 and on June 24. Russian forces continued ground attacks near Kreminna amid Russian claims of continued Ukrainian assaults in the area on June 24.
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Why is everyone concluding that this weakens Putin?
If anything could overthrow him, a Wagner coup tops the list, but it ended as quickly as it began. Now there’s fewer looming threats and he proved he can squash such a serious one with ease. Didn’t he become more secure?
The only harm I can see is that Wagner is no longer in Ukraine.
- A private military of 25,000 was permitted to occupy the southern military district headquarters, down military helicopters, and march through the streets most of the way to the capitol.
  They did so with zero apparent or meaningful resistance.
  It's not about nebulous power moves that raise or lower Putin's perceived strength. It's about the very real and very poor state of Russia's available internal security forces.
- It makes Putin look weak since he can't even control his own military forces and had to be saved by a foreign leader.
  It makes the Russian military look weak since they had no answer to a coup attempt against their own headquarters and against their capital, even with forewarning.

31 comments

tl;dr: