In May, Yevgeny Prigozhin declared victory for Wagner Group forces fighting in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. About a month later, those fighters were marching on Moscow, an apparent rebellion from the very people waging Vladimir Putin’s war.
Russia’s military setbacks in Ukraine spurred this political stability. But all of it overshadowed the conflict itself, which continued as the uprising unfolded. One week ago today, as Prigozhin’s confrontation escalated, Russia fired missiles on Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv. Ukraine continued its counteroffensive operations, claiming on Monday to have liberated another village in the southeast, at least the ninth since its campaign began.
The full fallout from the Wagner revolt is still unwinding, and there are still so, so many questions about what happened, and what comes next. That includes what the rebellion means for the war in Ukraine, especially as Kyiv seeks to liberate its territory in a counteroffensive in the east and the south that has, most everyone admits, been slow-going.
The Wagner Group was one of Russia’s more effective fighting forces (even if that sometimes came at high personnel costs), and it is now likely eliminated as an entity on the battlefield, at least in the form it once was. Putin’s power is also in doubt, and Prigozhin seeded the idea that the justification for this war is hollow. “That’s going to be very difficult for Putin, I think, politically, to keep people in the fold on this,” said Jason Blazakis, senior research fellow at The Soufan Center. “That’s going to have an effect on their ability to project power also in Ukraine.”
How Ukraine will try to exploit the weaknesses Prigozhin’s adventure exposed is another element of all of this. As experts said, it’s all too early to say; most everything is more speculative than certain at this point. But here are some of the big questions and things to watch for to help understand how the…
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