KYIV, Ukraine — The head of a group of Russian mercenaries emerges from the shadows to challenge Moscow’s ruling establishment, using battlefield success in Ukraine to burnish its credentials as a new face of warfare.
Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed victory for his Wagner group of military contractors in the salt mining town of Soledar on Wednesday, in what would amount to the Kremlin’s first battlefield success in months after a series of embarrassing setbacks.
However, the Ukrainian government said its soldiers were still withstanding a ferocious attack after a months-long battle on the eastern front, while Russia’s Defense Ministry appeared to contradict Prigozhin, the latest sign of growing discord at the top of the Moscow war effort.
NBC News was unable to verify either claim.
Capturing Soledar may not prove decisive in the course of the war, but it could offer Prigozhin a launching pad for his own personal campaign that seemed increasingly at odds with the military leadership in the Kremlin.
As the mercenary boss claimed victory, the Defense Ministry announced another shakeup on top of its “special military operation”, replacing its commanding general in Ukraine after just 3 months in charge.
The new post of General Valery Gerasimov and the demotion of General Sergei Surovikin could reflect a desire to crush Prigozhin’s ambitions, some analysts said. Prigozhin accused Gerasimov, Russia’s top military officer, of incompetence.
“This reaffirms the Defense Ministry’s position to oversee the war,” Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Institute for Foreign Policy Research, a think tank, said on Twitter. «This may also be in part a response to Wagner’s increasingly influential and public role in the war,» he added.
On Wednesday, Prigozhin posted a photo of himself among soldiers at what he said was a mine in Soledar, which along with the nearby town of Bakhmut has been ravaged by some of the most intense fighting since Russia’s invasion last year.
“Units of the Wagner PMCs took control of the entire territory of Soledar… I want to emphasize once again that no units participated in the assault on Soledar except the fighters of the Wagner PMCs,” said a statement attributed to Prigozhin published in a Wagner. -Linked Telegram messaging channel.
NBC News has not been able to confirm where the photo was taken.
By contrast, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not confirm that Soledar had fallen to Russian forces or mention the involvement of the Wagner group in attempts to take it.
«Let’s not rush and wait for official statements,» he said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its «airborne troops blocked Soledar from the northern and southern parts of the city,» but added that «assault squads are fighting in the city.»
Prigozhin’s post, and his emphasis on the success of his own troops, comes amid a spate of statements, photos and videos online in recent weeks that analysts say amount to a brazen campaign of self-promotion and open antagonism. toward the military leaders behind a war that has been faltering long since the invasion in February.
Prigozhin, 61, once known as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s «chef» for catering state events, has long publicly denied leading the Wagner group, a private military company that has also operated in countries including Syria, Mali and the Central African Republic. Russia has consistently denied the involvement of the Wagner Group in its official military operations.
But it has grabbed public attention during the conflict in Ukraine, where its fighters are leading the charge against Kyiv troops in the eastern Donetsk region at enormous human cost.
Private military companies are technically illegal in Russia, but in November Wagner opened offices in St. Petersburg emblazoned with the group’s logo.
Prigozhin has donned military uniforms and appeared in videos that appear to show him recruiting prisoners or in the midst of action on the front lines, in contrast to the city-dwelling elites he mocks at some of his posts.
He has been outspoken in criticizing Russian military top brass, and a social media channel linked to Wagner shared a tirade of two men claiming to be Russian soldiers criticizing army chiefs amid reports of low morale and organizational disorder, and Prigozhin. He later vowed to «make them (the military) solve» the problems on the front lines in an audio post.
Such tactics are highly unusual in a top-down political system where dissidents are routinely jailed and even poisoned or found after mysteriously falling from hotel windows and balconies.
With the Kremlin’s military campaign in Ukraine largely stalled and Putin up for re-election in 2024, some experts say the time may be right for a power play.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russia expert at the Washington-based think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote of a looming fight between pragmatists who want to de-escalate the conflict and hawks who want to double down on and radically restructure Russia’s political system. .
“Their fight for supremacy will be one of the key political fights of 2023, and it largely depends on events on the battlefield: the worse Russia performs militarily, the crueler the battle of the pragmatists with the hawks will be,” wrote in an investigation. note published on Monday.
“The hawks will take the offensive, targeting the military and political high command,” he added.
To date, the hawks have been much louder than the pragmatists, with a chorus of far-right bloggers criticizing Russia’s military performance, while TV pundits have called for a tougher approach.
Prigozhin has fostered a harsh image online, appearing with a sledgehammer in one video and, according to Reuters, commenting approvingly on another that showed an accused defector being executed with a sledgehammer.
In a video from January 1, Prigozhin is shown inspecting a pile of bodies described in the clip as Wagner fighters in black bags in a makeshift morgue, saying: «Your contract is up, you can go home.»
Ukrainian authorities accuse Prigozhin of using his mercenaries as cannon fodder, throwing them into the fight to wear down Kyiv’s defenses and secure a high-profile victory no matter the human cost.
After months of fighting, that strategy may have secured his first battlefield breakthrough and a response from the Kremlin.
