MEGA: The Ukrainian Divide

2.5 Two Hours to Moscow

13 min read

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In the face of these serious setbacks, the Russians were keen to retake the initiative and show their population that they were still capable of achieving successes on the battlefield, launching new offensives in early 2023.

This plan was mostly a failure, with no significant changes on the battlefield or shifts in the balance of power, but Russia was able to claim one notable battlefield victory, the capture of a city in the Donetsk region called Bakhmut (also referred to by an older name, “Artemovsk”, by Russian sources).

The takeover of the city was lauded by the Russian press and its participants were labelled as heroes, but the interesting thing is, 

the soldiers behind this victory weren’t Russian troops.

This is Yevegeny Prigozhin, he’s not a commander or even a member of the Russian military, he’s a businessman, and the soldiers next to him are from a once mysterious Private Military Company called the Wagner Group.

Wagner is an organisation that has been around for a long time, the group was reportedly founded in 2014 by Prigozhin and an ex-Spetsnaz agent known as Dmitry Utkin, the group participated in the early separatist conflicts in Donbas, but also other conflict regions of interest to Russia, specifically Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic and Mali.

For many years Wagner did not officially exist, Prigozhin denied any links to paramilitary activity and the group went mostly unacknowledged, in fact Wagner technically was never even a legal organisation because forming paramilitary groups is a crime in Russia, but it seems this group was allowed to operate to give the Kremlin an opportunity to pursue some of its military ambitions with plausible deniability.

However, with the invasion of Ukraine, the mask slipped, Prigozhin admitted his involvement with Wagner and the group began clearly working alongside Russian troops as a participant in the invasion.

But Wagner’s value didn’t just come from its arms length relationship with Kremlin, the group is also a valuable asset to the Russians because of its talent pool, being an organisation filled with battle hardened mercenaries, who don’t easily shy away from a fight or from swinging their favourite tool around: The Sledgehammer, which has become emblematic for the Organisation as a whole, put simply the group was ruthless towards its enemies and towards any potential traitors.

Sourced from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wagner-group-sends-eu-parliament-a-message-with-bloodied-hammer-kr6tfr7vc

Wagner also acted as a source for disposable manpower as part of the war effort, with Prigozhin, an ex-criminal himself, recruiting prisoners to fight for the company, promising forgiven sentences for those who survived and warning that falling behind would be considered a death sentence, this combination of hardened mercenaries and disposable crooks created a force that was capable of achieving successes where regular Russian forces could only produce stagnation.

But being an extralegal group staffed by criminals, operating outside of the military’s control, Wagner was volatile and at odds with the rest of the invasion force, having a tighter bond to Prigozhin rather than the leader of their country. 

During the capture of Bakhmut Prigozhin had a habit of posting angry rants to his social media sources, accusing Russian Generals of mismanaging the war and not providing his company with enough resources, and even after the end of the battle these rants continued, with Prigozhin accusing the Russian military of mining the route out of the city and even briefly “arresting” a Russian officer for shooting at one of his convoys. As more and more news of Prigozhin’s outbursts emerged it became clear that the Wagner Group was a powder keg, and that while his forces were aligned to the Kremlin, it wasn’t a cosy relationship.

To resolve this standoff, the Russian Defence Ministry issued an order demanding that the paramilitary forces of the war effort sign contracts with the Russian military, bringing them fully under government control, but this demand produced the exact opposite of what the Kremlin was hoping for, prompting Prigozhin to plan his boldest move yet.

After the Russian offensive died down, Ukraine responded with a new counter offensive in mid-2023 that also produced lacking results, but in this period, while most Russian forces were busy defending their front lines, Prigozhin decided to execute his plan.

Suddenly, on the early evening of July 23rd, Prigozhin delivered a furious speech on his Telegram account stating that the Russian government was lying to its people about the Ukraine conflict, noting that neither Ukraine or NATO had been planning any sort of attack on Russia, stating that Zelensky had been ready to negotiate, and even going as far as saying that the real cause for the invasion had been to enrich an “oligarchic clan” of “mentally ill scumbags”. He essentially demolished Russia’s entire narrative of an aggressive Ukraine and a Russia acting in self defence, and slammed Russia’s military leaders as a gang of crooks, I guess it takes one to know one.

Even after that, not many could have predicted that the “Wagnerites” would try to swing their sledgehammers at Putin’s head, but that’s exactly what happened.

In the early hours of July 24th, Wagner troops left their bases and crossed the border from the disputed territories of Donbas into Russia proper, sending a massive convoy towards Rostov city in what Prigozhin was calling a “march of justice”. Within hours the official state media of Russia (TASS) announced that criminal cases had been opened against Prigozhin and the Wagner group on charges of “mutiny”, and claimed that entry towards Rostov was being blocked by military checkpoints.

But these checkpoints completely failed to stop the Wagner advance, as in the morning Wagner troops entered the centre of Rostov city and took control of the Russian military headquarters there, which was also the control centre for the entire Ukraine war effort, an hour later, 4am GMT, footage emerged of Prigozhin himself at the headquarters with senior Russian military officials, threatening that if the Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov did not come to Rostov to meet with him, Prigozhin would go to Moscow, the unthinkable was confirmed, a rebel force had marched into a major Russian city and taken over without a fight, Wagner was launching a coup.

Unsurprisingly Gerasimov didn’t show up, and it became clear that the Wagner forces were following through on their threat, while some soldiers remained in Rostov to secure control of the city the rest of the troops continued their convoy on the 12 hour drive to Moscow, by 5am GMT footage emerged of Wagner forces at the halfway point of the journey, Voronezh, and as more and more civilians posted footage to social media of the convoy passing along its route it became clear what the Russian authorities were up against, a patchwork of military trucks, civilian vehicles, and BMP armoured personnel carriers.

By this point, Vladimir Putin finally emerged to give a short 5 minute speech justifying the Ukraine war, accusing the Wagner forces of treason, and promising to “stabilise” the situation in Rostov-on-Don, the most this amounted to was a convoy of Kremlin-loyalist Chechens being sent to Rostov to retake the city, but they got stuck in a traffic jam… Yes, seriously.

Shortly after the speech, Prigozhin responded with a direct criticism of the Russian President:

As for the betrayal of the motherland, the president was deeply mistaken. We, the patriots of our homeland, we have fought and are fighting. All Wagner PMC fighters and no one is going to at the request of the president of the FSB or someone else to turn themselves in, because we don’t want the country to continue to live in corruption, deceit and bureaucracy.

When we were fighting in Africa, we were told that we needed Africa, and after that it was abandoned because they stole all the money that was supposed to go to help. When we were told we were at war with Ukraine, we went and fought. But it turned out that the supplies, the weapons, all the money that had been put into them was also being stolen.

And the bureaucrats are sitting there, saving them for themselves, just for the occasion, which came today, when someone goes to Moscow.

The steady progression of the convoy despite Putin’s clear stance against the mutiny made it clear that the Kremlin was paralysed, with its defences along the route only including troops from Russia’s National Guard who were unwilling or unable to attack the convoy, as the day progressed the Wagner forces were getting closer and closer to their target, reaching the Lipetsk region, 4 hours away from Moscow by midday (GMT), and as it became clear that this was a serious threat the Russian government organised a series of retaliations, preparing checkpoints equipped with grenade launchers on the outskirts of Moscow, ordering Wagner affiliated social media accounts to be blocked, and having roads dug up with excavators to block the routes available to the convoy.

By 4pm social media reports of Wagner Group reaching the Moscow Region had emerged, which matched with appearances on Google Maps of traffic jams in the region, showing that the convoy was roughly 2 hours away from Moscow city centre,

![[Pasted image 20240515234237.png]]

but it was this point that the tide began to turn, reports of Russian troops preparing to leave the front in Ukraine to defend Moscow and footage of Russian Marines pledging their loyalty to Putin appeared on social media

and around an hour later it emerged that Prigozhin had negotiated with a close ally of Russia, President Lukashenko of Belarus, on a deal to stop the convoy and send the mutineers back to base.

After over 12 hours of chaos, the coup attempt was over, and by 7pm Wagner was seen withdrawing from Rostov city, returning the area to Russian military control.

According to the Institute for the Study of War, a conflict analysis think tank, the furthest point the convoy reached was the village of Krasnoe, roughly an hour away from the Moscow city centre.

As a result we didn’t find out what Prigozhin was planning to do if he actually reached Moscow, did he want to outright remove Putin? Or keep him as a figurehead, someone who gets to call the shots on civilian politics but not the war effort? We’ll likely never know.

So looking at the aftermath of this we have 2 questions, why did Prigozhin agree to turn back, and why did Putin allow him to continue breathing?

Most likely, Prigozhin realised that unlike all the other areas Wagner’s convoy had reached, in Moscow there would be a real resistance to his forces, and Wagner wasn’t ready for a brutal prolonged battle in the middle of Russia’s capital.

As for Putin, he probably realised that having his troops in open combat with fighters that the Russian media had only months before been praising as heroic patriots for their actions in Bakhmut, would be bad PR.

But even with this peaceful resolution, a major leader in Russia’s forces going rogue and uprooting the Kremlin’s entire propaganda narrative was clearly a major blow to Russia’s image, something we can especially see from the damage control the Russian press attempted in the coup’s aftermath.

While at the time of the Bakhmut battle, Putin himself was quoted in the media congratulating Wagner for their “heroic” accomplishments and promising medals, after the mutiny attempt the Russian press tried to pull off a 180, presenting the narrative that while many Wagner fighters were true patriots, their efforts in Bakhmut actually weren’t very important or impressive on the grand scale of things, and reports of their effectiveness were just a “myth”. 

Although ultimately the frontlines in Ukraine ultimately didn’t change much during or immediately after the coup attempt, the credibility of the war effort was certainly undermined, an invasion sold to the Russian people as bringing stability, and ending a conflict, instead brought instability, and massively expanded that conflict.

That was a blow many suspected would be too much for the Kremlin, in the weeks after the mutiny many commentators speculated that Prigozhin was a dead man walking, 2 months later they were proven right.

In August 2023, Prigozhin published his first video after the mutiny, filming a Wagner recruitment pitch in Africa, and only days later on a return trip to Russia, his plane suddenly crashed, killing all on board.

The Kremlin presented this as a tragic aviation accident, while Wagner supporters claimed the plane had been purposefully shot down by Russian air defence, others speculated a bomb might have been detonated on board the plane itself, either way a loose end for Putin was tied up, and to us, well, let’s put it this way… It seems like Prigozhin became Icarus, flying too close to the sun.

While Russia managed to squash this particular crisis, what happens next, only time will tell.

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