Things have reached a fever pitch inside Russia’s war on Ukraine. The ongoing rivalry between the Wagner Group, a mercenary army that has been invaluable to Russia’s affront on Ukraine, and the Russian military leadership is at the heart of the tension. Yet intense as the infighting between the two factions has become, the two have been forced to rely on each other out of sheer necessity. The Wagner Group needs the Russian military as a source of supplies, and the Russian military needs Wagner to fill in breaches and engage in near-suicidal missions the Russian high command would rather avoid.
As it stands, the opposing camps are either oblivious to this most basic fact or are more interested in settling scores than salvaging a war effort that, to date, has been riddled with a lack of coordination and has weakened Russia militarily, politically, economically and strategically.
Whether or not all the details are substantiated, the report itself highlights a tug-of-war between Prigozhin’s private army and the Russian military establishment.
On May 15, The Washington Post reported that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose fighters have backstopped the Russian army in places like the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, offered to provide Ukraine with intelligence on Russian troop positions in exchange for Kyiv pulling its forces from the mid-size city. The information, part of a dossier of U.S. intelligence reports leaked to the messaging chat-group Discord, reinforces the notion of the Russian military machine at war with itself.
Prigozhin forcefully denied the allegations, alleging that the entire thing was concocted by his enemies in the Kremlin. But whether or not all the details are substantiated, the report itself highlights a tug-of-war between Prigozhin’s private army and the Russian military establishment, each of which have been taking rhetorical shots at each other even as they fight against staunch Ukrainian resistance in the field.
It’s no…
Read the full article here