Published via Ecency

When the war began, Putin's favorite military outfit, the Wagner Group, were touted as Russia's secret weapon. Their brutality in Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic had earned them a reputation as an effective fighting force. Despite a slow start to the war, in the last few weeks, it looked like they were finally living up to that reputation. That's because using some pretty ruthless tactics, including so-called human wave attacks, Wagner forces successfully took a series of small towns around Bakhmut, and at one point it looked like tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the town were about to be encircled. However, after senior Wagner officials bragged about their successes in Bakhmut and mocked the Russian army's efforts around Voloder, a rift has emerged between the two sides and it now looks like the Russian high command actually refusing to supply Wagner with ammunition, which is the main reason why Bakhmut is still in Ukrainian hands. So in this article, we're going to take a look at this new tension within the Russian army. Why it's been great news for the Ukrainians on the battlefield, especially around Bakhmut, and why it's actually quite bad news for Putin.

So to understand this story, you need to know a bit about the Wagner Group and the Kremlin's wider affinity towards private military outfits. In the last decade or so, Russia has developed a habit of using private or so-called paramilitary groups to do its bidding. These include the Wagner Group, of course, led by a close Putin ally, Ramzan Kadyrov's Chechen mercenaries, usually known as the Kadyrov's or the DPR and LPR militias, which have received copious amounts of support from the Russian military.

Now Russia uses these groups because they're only semi accountable to the Russian state, which means that they can be brutally effective while still providing Putin and the Kremlin with a degree of plausible deniability. Additionally, these groups can do terrible things during the war, and the Kremlin can just say this isn't the Russian army, so we're not responsible. Even though these paramilitary groups are fighting on the same side as the Russians and presumably receiving orders from the Russian command. These groups also allow the Kremlin to cover up the true cost of the war because deaths and military expenditure in these groups just don't show up on official statistics, even if they're indirectly funded by the Kremlin.

Anyway most of the war this has worked pretty well for the Kremlin. However, in the past couple of weeks, relations between Wagner and the rest of the Russian army have apparently soured. That's because after literally months of futile prodding at the beginning of this year, the Wagner group finally started making progress around Bakhmut, taking the suburb of Soloder to the north in the middle of January. This advance was followed by a series of triumphant announcements on Pro Wagner Telegram channels, and Wagner was even congratulated by the Russian Ministry of Defence, who had previously refrained from even acknowledging the group, much to bridge Gavin's irritation. Now this seems to be where the trouble really began because a couple of days later Gavin posted a video to telegram where he essentially implied that Wagner was more effective than the Russian army and that they just didn't need their support. Then, after the Russian army failed its offensive in Voloder, the Wagner Group Telegram channel mocked the effort as scandalous and suggested that the assault was an attempt to take attention away from the Wagner group's successes around Soloder.

Now it seems that this was a step too far for the Russian MOD, who apparently decided to stop supplying ammo to the Wagner group in retaliation. Unsurprisingly, this didn't go down too well with Kasim, who started issuing daily diatribes against the Russian Defense Ministry with him even releasing a video of Wagner troops shooting at photos of two Russian army generals and calling them fags. Prigozhin even singled out Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, criticizing him for sending his kids on holiday instead of to the trenches and offering to personally train his son in law, who made the mistake of liking an anti war post on Instagram. Now, for context, sure, you and British Kevin really don't get on. And Shoigu has even apparently deployed his own private military company called Patriot PMC in Donbas in order to compete directly with the Wagner Group anyway. After this didn't work, Prigozhin posted a photo of all of the Wagner troops that had died around Barmouth in a single day and claim that only one fifth of them would have died if the Russian Mod had supplied them with the ammo. For their part, the Russian mod has denied the accusations, claiming that all ammunition requests will be fulfilled as soon as possible, as well as ordering the Russian media to essentially censor Prigozhin and Wagner. Other sources in the Russian army have also claimed that Wagner is using too much ammunition in the first place and that their supplies are being cut due to a general reduction in the Russian army across the board caused by shell shortages.

You get the idea, though. There's clearly a spat brewing between Wagner and the rest of the Russian army. And this is good news for Ukraine and bad news for Russia. It's good news for Ukraine because it's taken some pressure off the Ukrainian positions in Bakhmut before the Russian army cut off supplies to Wagner. They were making steady progress towards encircling the town, however, presumably because they've run out of ammo in the last few weeks, their advance has stalled. And on Monday, there are even reports that Ukrainians were staging counter offensives in the north of Bakhmut. Now, it's important not to overstate this. Bakhmut is still at real risk of operational encirclement, and Wagner has still been able to make some progress, especially in the South. Nonetheless, even if it does fall, which seems pretty inevitable at this point, the spat between Prigozhin and the Russian mod might have given the Ukrainians enough time. To get as many troops out of the town as possible. It's also bad news for Russia, though, going forward, because a divided army is less effective than a united one. And it also puts more pressure on Putin himself. That's because the fall of Bakhmut is important to Putin.

It will mark the first significant success for Russia since, well, maybe the start of the invasion. So if Wagner get credit instead of the Russian army, this will only make the Russian army by proxy, the Russian state look even less competent, especially if Prigozhin continues with his relentless criticism. And ultimately, this is why most states don't use private or paramilitary groups. While they might get away with certain things. They can be a destabilizing influence on the wider army because their incentives aren't always identical, and it can lead to damaging rifts just like this one. Now, obviously, in this specific example, we'll have to wait and see how this shakes out. But this is a worrying division for the Putin regime.

Sources: