Polonium for Prigozhin
Yevgeny Prigozhin has saved his skin for the time being. The deal with the Kremlin, brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, is that the hitherto absolute leader of the Wagner militia will go into "exile" in Minsk and let his mercenaries agree to come under the discipline of the Defence Ministry. In exchange, the Kremlin withdraws its accusations of treason and rebellion, which President Putin himself has levelled against Wagner, and which, if successful, could lead to twenty years in the sinister prisons of Siberia. The deal reportedly puts an end to serious tensions between the Wagner Group and the Kremlin, especially with the two top defence ministry officials, Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valeri Gerasimov.
Prigozhin, who had done a lot of dirty work for the Kremlin in Ukraine, especially in Crimea and Donbas from 2014 onwards, had gradually distanced himself from the chain of command, causing his former close friend Putin serious problems with his own armed forces.
Conceived, financed and praised as a shock force, with its members, many of them ex-convicts enlisted in exchange for prison sentences, the Wagner militia became not only the spearhead and cannon fodder of the offensive in Ukraine but also served to expose the shortcomings and weaknesses of Russia's regular army. NATO intelligence services have been able to verify the poor maintenance of Russian weapons, the lack of preparedness of Russian commanders and the lack of motivation of the soldiers, who have had to be dragged to the front lines. Prigozhin deepened these findings when he began to complain, with increasing vehemence, about the lack of ammunition and supplies to his own troops.
His criticism of Shoigu and Gerasimov, both top representatives of the so-called Moscow Clan, which clashed in the Kemlin with the St. Petersburg Clan, allegedly including Putin's own old comrades, increased. This struggle has revealed Putin's own weakness, who believed that in Wagner and his former cook Prigozhin he had a decisive ace in the hole to maintain his position as the unquestionable arbiter between the competing factions. But the big underlying issue that has blown the whole thing apart is that Prigozhin's public claims and criticisms have revealed that rampant corruption is the main reason why Russia's "Special Operation" in Ukraine has not achieved the lightning victory that his generals sold Putin to unleash the invasion, and why the current situation on the frontline has become bogged down, with the only partial victory being the capture of Bakhmut, thanks to Wagner at the cost of a staggering number of casualties.
No matter how much iron-fisted censorship the Kremlin has imposed, Prigozhin's strident denunciations have permeated the population and the dismay of mothers to whom the Moscow authorities do not provide reliable information on the situation of their dead or wounded children, provoking an evident demoralisation both among the fighters and among a population that silently ruminates on its dismay and distrust, as in the worst days of Stalinism.
Theoretically, Prigozhin has been deactivated, although he himself knows that he will not be exempt from a dose of polonium or novichok should Putin or his bitter enemies in the Defence Ministry wish to seal his lips forever. Nor is he unaware that Lukashenko, in the end, is nothing more than Putin's henchman, with whom he signs and fulfils whatever Putin asks or demands of him.
In his televised address before the advance of the Wagner troops towards Moscow, the Russian president himself evoked the similarities with the Bolshevik revolution that coincided with the fighting that Russia was engaged in during the First World War. It is clear that the Wagners' uprising and their march on Moscow, aborted after the aforementioned agreement, will have consequences. The balance of power in the Kremlin appears more unstable than ever since the outbreak of the war with Ukraine. This instability could lead to a collapse if the course of the war turns even more unfavourable for Russia. Hence, Biden's consultations with his key NATO allies have set the phones on fire (Pedro Sánchez's is not known to be on fire in this regard), as the actions to be taken in support of Ukraine could be precipitated and the outcome accelerated.
It is also clear that the power struggle within the Kremlin could lead to a situation of chaos that is in no one's interest; nothing worse than a fragmented, chaotic and, beware, uncontrolled nuclear-armed Russian federation.
Nor should the role of Wagner be ruled out. The alternatives range from dismantling it to strengthening it, in this case to use it even more thoroughly in Africa, for example.