Mercenary troop before disintegration
ISW: Prigozchin’s death is the end of Wagner
08/25/2023, 10:25 am
After the alleged death of Wagner boss Prigozhin, the question arises as to how his mercenary troupe will continue. According to military experts, the future of the Wagner unit without a real leadership structure is uncertain.
According to the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the Wagner group should not remain in its current form. The mercenary force will likely no longer exist “as a quasi-independent parallel military structure” after Kremlin boss Putin “almost certainly” assassinated the organization’s leadership, according to an assessment by the think tank.
As a result, Wagner is no longer able to reverse the effects of the post-Wagner Uprising campaign by the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense to weaken the organization. There are also reports that the Department of Defense has set up private military companies that have recruited current and former Wagner employees to take control of Wagner’s overseas operations. Insiders at Wagner are mentioned as the source of the reports.
Russian sources also claim that the Kremlin refuses to pay the Belarusian government for Wagner’s work in Belarus. Financial problems have already led to reduced payments, which has already caused several Wagner fighters to leave.
Leadership vacuum at Wagner
The British secret service also believes that the leadership vacuum at Wagner will intensify. That depends on whether the deaths of field commander Dmitri Utkin and logistics chief Valery Chekalov are also confirmed by the Russian side.
Finding a successor for Prigozhin will be difficult. “His personal characteristics such as hyperactivity, exceptional boldness, focus on results and extreme brutality shaped Wagner and should not be equaled by any successor,” the British ministry said. The group is said to consist of more than 37,000 mercenaries, around 10,000 of whom were recruited from prisons.
A plane crashed between Moscow and St. Petersburg on Wednesday evening in the Tver region near Kuschenkino. According to the Ministry of Disaster Management, none of the ten occupants survived. Prigozhin’s name was also on the passenger list. A little later, President Vladimir Putin offered his condolences to the Prigozhin family. However, the authorities did not formally announce the death of the Wagner boss, and the bodies have not yet been identified.