The Wagner Mutiny Foreshadows a Russian Defeat
Prigozhin’s escapade shows Putin’s war in Ukraine isn’t going well for him.
People walk past an armoured personnel carrier in the city of Rostov-on-Don, on June 24, 2023.
Photographer: STRINGER/AFPThe mutiny by Wagner PMC, the mercenary army founded by St. Petersburg caterer Yevgeny Prigozhin, hardly comes as a surprise after months of mockery and derision directed at military leaders in Moscow. But in its timing — in the midst of a Ukrainian counteroffensive — this apparent reenactment of Benito Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome could foreshadow Russia’s defeat in its war of choice.
On Friday morning, Prigozhin published a long video on Telegram in which he argued that the Ukraine invasion was launched for little more than Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s vanity and a corrupt oligarchy’s business interests. He claimed the Russian army was retreating and losing 10 times more soldiers than it would have lost under better military leadership. Russian dissidents have been jailed for years for saying less: “Discreditation of the military” carries a maximum 15-year prison term under the Russian criminal code.