Candace Rondeaux is a professor of practice at the School of Politics and Global Studies and a senior fellow with the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University. Ben Dalton is a program manager for the Future Frontlines program at the New America think tank.
Nothing about the outcome of Wagner Group chieftain Yevgeny Prigozhin’s revolt against Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was preordained. Nor is the future fixed. What is certain is that with Mr. Prigozhin now banished from Russia we will all need to keep our eyes fixed on Minsk.
The Belarusian capital is where Mr. Prigozhin reportedly ended up just 24 hours after he ordered his 25,000-man-strong paramilitary force to mount a March for Justice on Moscow. He agreed to halt his armed uprising against Mr. Putin and withdraw after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko brokered a temporary truce. The next stage of this drama will hinge as much on the position Mr. Prigozhin will occupy there as it will on how Mr. Putin and those around him manage the fallout in Russia.
The minute that Mr. Prigozhin ordered his contract soldiers to march from a military cantonment in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, it was obvious that it was the beginning of the end of Mr. Putin’s 24-year reign. The fact that the Wagner Group was able to reach within striking distance of the Kremlin virtually unimpeded speaks volumes to the fundamental weakness of Mr. Putin’s regime. The armed revolt killed 15 Russian servicemen and sent shock waves around the world.
Mr. Prigozhin contended that the precipitating cause of the march was the incompetence of Russia’s Minister of Defence, Sergey Shoigu, chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and others Mr. Putin tapped 15 months ago to run his war. First, there were the ammunition shortages. Then came Mr. Shoigu’s edict calling for “volunteer” contingents like the Wagner Group to fall under one united command by no later than July 1, a dictum Mr. Prigozhin outright refused. Mr. Prigozhin also accused Mr. Shoigu of turning up the pressure by ordering fratricidal strikes on Wagner positions late last week.
The real root cause of this mess and the Kremlin’s failure to contain the threat, however, is the corrosive effect of decades of unchecked corruption that Mr. Putin allowed to flourish. The history between Mr. Putin and Mr. Prigozhin dates back to their days in St. Petersburg, in an era Russians of a certain age refer to as the “Wild 1990s.” While Mr. Putin was deputy mayor of a city paralyzed by mafia violence, Mr. Prigozhin, a convict turned restaurateur, catered to gangsters, secret agents, and political power brokers alike.
Mr. Putin was a regular customer of Mr. Prigozhin’s upscale Old Customs House restaurant. After Mr. Putin was named acting president in 1999, he turned to Mr. Prigozhin to organize important state dinners. It was an assignment that rocketed Mr. Prigozhin to the upper ranks, and ultimately earned him the nickname “Putin’s Chef.” From there, Mr. Putin smoothed the way for Mr. Prigozhin to secure billions of dollars worth of defence contracts. It was those funds, and – according to recently leaked documents – a healthy heaping of help from Mr. Shoigu himself that enabled Mr. Prigozhin’s rise to power. Since the start of Russia’s first incursion in Ukraine in 2014, Mr. Prigozhin has emerged as the most recognizable face of Mr. Putin’s military adventurism.
Mr. Lukashenko, in his remarks to the press after the deal was struck, claimed that he had known Mr. Prigozhin for decades. That is probably true. Not only is it likely that Mr. Lukashenko has supped on Mr. Prigozhin’s catering, but Minsk has also long been a regular stopover for Russian paramilitary forces. It was only three years ago that the Belarusian leader claimed Mr. Putin sent Wagner mercenaries to overthrow his government. Mr. Lukashenko also twice helped Mr. Putin broker a ceasefire with Ukraine in what has since become known as the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements.
Can it be a coincidence that Mr. Prigozhin has landed in Minsk just 10 days after Mr. Lukashenko began publicly sharing details of how he tried last year to help negotiate a deal on Crimea between Mr. Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky? Surely not.
Mr. Prigozhin is a wanted man in the U.S. for his role in interfering in the 2016 presidential elections, and he is subject to American, Canadian and European sanctions. There is a reasonable chance that if Mr. Prigozhin eludes potential assassination attempts, he could face international trial for war crimes. Whatever happens, no one should be at all surprised if Mr. Prigozhin winds up being a pawn in a new round of Belarusian chess. The question is what will happen to the Wagner Group and who will be sacrificed next on the way to a potential Minsk III agreement. Either way, it’s a safe bet that the bargaining over Mr. Prigozhin’s fate is far from over.