Berkhivka is a village with about 120 inhabitants, but there shouldn’t be that many of them anyway because of the heavy fighting for the neighboring Bakhmut. Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has now declared that his Wagner troupe has captured this eastern Ukrainian village. With this, Prigozhin presented a small military success, presumably he presented it primarily to the Russian Ministry of Defence. With that he carries out his own, very strange fight.
Prigozhin and his private mercenary army are brutally involved in the Russian war of conquest in Ukraine, increasingly in competition with the official army. On Wednesday, Prigozhin published a photo of dozens of bodies lying on the frozen ground. It was his fighters, he explained, who died of a “hunger for ammunition.”
The culprits are those who should have clarified the question “how do we get enough ammunition”. The mercenary boss had previously asked the Ministry of Defense for ammunition for his front-line fighters every day for a week. He even went so far as to accuse Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu and Russian Chief of Staff Valeriy Gerasimov of high treason. On Thursday, Prigozhin’s press service confirmed that the required ammunition had finally been brought in at 6 a.m. and was being unloaded.
Is private army chief Wagner a threat to the regular army?
According to such statements, ordinary Russians would not have to wait long for their arrest, but Prigozhin has long had an unofficial special status. President Vladimir Putin largely allows him to stay in Ukraine, the many setbacks by the Russian army prompting him to do so. Prigozhin was even allowed to recruit thousands of Russian prisoners, although this practice was recently declared to be over. But the power struggle with the Russian military leadership should still be interesting.
The ministry itself initially reacted to the ammunition debate with restraint, speaking of “exalted statements about the alleged blocking of ammunition to voluntary assault units.” The name of the mercenary group Wagner did not come up at all. The Ministry of Defense criticized the attempts at a split only playing into the hands of the enemy.
The relationship could end quickly and without warning
Prigozhin, who with his paramilitary organization is strengthening Russia’s influence in Mali, Central Africa and Libya, and in some cases even has licenses to exploit raw materials, is considered a confidante of Kremlin chief Putin. Above all, his confidante is Defense Minister Shojgu, who has vacationed with Putin several times. Prigozhin’s massive attack on Putin’s favorite minister could mean that criticism of military failures is deliberately kept away from Putin in this way. After all, Putin himself is the supreme commander of the armed forces and responsible for the state of the army.
The Russian political scientist Tatyana Stanovaya writes in an essay of Moscow Timesthat Shoygu and Gerasimov convinced Putin that Prigozhin was a threat to the army. And that this is why Putin put Gerasimov in charge of the war in Ukraine in January. And this too, says Stanovaya, despite everything that Prigozhin has dared to do so far: “His relationship with the state is informal and therefore fragile. And it could end without warning.”