«The mutiny led by Prigozhin and Utkin two months ago sealed the fate of Wagner and his own»

2023-08-25 03:18:48

Exactly one month ago, CIA Director William Burns made a public statement about the events following the Wagnerite riot in June, during the Aspen Security Forum. «[Vladimir] Putin is someone who generally thinks revenge is a dish best served cold. So he’s going to try to resolve the situation as much as possible. But then again, in my experience, Putin is the ultimate apostle of revenge. So I would be surprised if [[[LINK:EXTERNO||| Prigozhin]]will get rid of more reprisals for this, “he warned.

With the mysterious accident in Kuzhenkino, not only the leader Prigozhin disappears, but also the leadership of the controversial mercenaries. And it is that on board the Embraer Legacy that collapsed on its way to Saint Petersburg, the commander and co-founder of Wagner Dmitri Utkin was also there, who in normal circumstances would have been the natural successor. Utkin was Prigozhin’s most trusted and highly admired among the militiamen for his work on the Syrian and Ukrainian fronts.

“It is quite certain that the Wagner group will not survive in its original form. The mutiny led by Prigozhin and Utkin two months ago sealed the fate of Wagner and his own,” says Ivan Katchanovski, a professor at the University of Ottawa and an expert on former Soviet republics. Then, “Putin openly declared that this mutiny was a betrayal by Prigozhin, and Putin has also said that he does not forgive betrayals,” Katchanovski recalls to LA RAZÓN.

Another possible contender to lead the Wagners was Valeriy Chekalov. But according to Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, his name is also among the seven passengers and three crew members killed. Chekalov was one of the closest friends of the Russian oligarch and was in charge of the logistics of the mercenary group. He oversaw Prigozhin’s contracts to supply militiamen with food and foreign projects involving geological exploration, oil or agriculture. Yevgeni Makaryan, a former police officer, joined the ranks of the mercenaries in 2016. While Sergei Propustin, alias “Kedr”, had been with them since 2014 and headed a special unit that supplied Prigozhin with many of his bodyguards. .

Katchanovski assures that already “several reports indicated that Wagner’s commanders and members had been given the option of joining the Russian Army or other mercenary companies that are under stricter control of the Russian Government.” And it is that, although Wagner was “nominally a private company directed by Prigozhin, it depended on the financing, transport and weapons provided by the Russian Government.”

The Wagner mercenary group “de facto promoted the goals of the Russian government, while giving it plausible deniability of Russian state involvement, for example, in supporting separatists in Donbas during the war in 2014, or in other military missions in Syria, Libya, Mali, Sudan and other countries”, explains the professor. For this reason, Katchanovski adds, “the Russian government is likely to turn to the restructured Wagner group or to new mercenary companies with former Wagner commanders and members, but under tight control.”

And he points out that the name could even be changed, since it was Utkin’s war alias, “because Richard Wagner was Hitler’s favorite composer.”

As for the fear of whether the militants could enter the countries neighboring Belarus, Katchanovski is very cautious. “It is unlikely that the mercenaries will go to Poland or Lithuania, precisely because they are NATO countries. Their participation would be considered by the Alliance states as an attack by Russia and would trigger Article 5 which would lead to a possible war between Russia and NATO.”

Where they could cause problems is in Russia. “Telegram channels close to the Wagner mercenary company accused the Russian military of shooting down the plane with Prigozhin and Utkin. A channel of the neo-Nazi ‘Rusichi’ detachment, which is part of Wagner, wrote that their mistake was not going all the way during the riot.” However, the expert points out that it is “unlikely that there will be new armed riots after the disappearance of Prigozhin and Utkin and the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the Wagners by the Russian military and the transfer of mercenaries to Belarus.” He though he insists that, after all, “the ‘Rusichi’ detachment is small.”