Wagner Group is ‘decapitated’ but warmongers may keep it alive | UK News

A shadowy network of commanders may keep the Wagner Group going after the reported death of leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash.

Other senior figures may step in as the Kremlin labours in its attempts to bring the formation under its fold, an all-source intelligence analyst said.

The scale of the group’s blood-soaked operations across the Middle East and Africa may also make it difficult to subsume the entire group.

Vladimir Putin appears to have exacted revenge on Prigozhin after the warlord’s private jet crashed near the city of Tver, north of Moscow, on Wednesday night, with the loss of all 10 onboard.

The mercenary boss’s apparent demise came exactly two months after his private army, designated a transnational criminal organization by the US, aborted an armed advance on the capital. The Russian president described the group’s insubordination as a ‘rebellion’ and a ‘stab in the back’.

The backdrop to the mutiny had included attempts by the Russian state to bring private military contractors (PMCs) into the conventional military fold by making them sign over — a process still thought to be taking place.

Alec Bertina, an all-source analyst at the Grey Dynamics private intelligence firm, assesses that while Wagner may have been ‘decapitated’, the body is still alive across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

MORE : Follow the latest on Prigozhin’s reported death here

‘There are other Important Wagner Group commanders who are still alive, or at least not confirmed dead,’ he said.

‘We are talking about senior commander Andrei Troshev and people with callsigns like Ratibor, Zombie and Lotus.

‘I would suggest that while a big piece of Wagner has gone, there are still sufficient elements left to keep the organization going.’

Prigozhin’s business jet, also carrying Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin and logistics chief Valeriy Chekalov, is thought to have exploded near Tver, mid-way between Moscow and St Petersburg.

Other Russian PMCs — which like Wagner have left behind a trail of atrocities and suspected war crimes — might now seek gains amid Putin’s disastrous all-out invasion of Ukraine.

But senior Wagnernites may still exert an influence, and they include experienced operators such as Lotus, the nom de guerre for former Russian platoon commander Anton Yelizarov. Another is Alexander Kuznetsov, known as Ratibor, a decorated former special forces soldier who spent time in prison for kidnapping and robbery.

‘As to the future of Wagner, it might be that there are other non-state security actors looking to fight for a share of the group’s resources,’ Bertina said. ‘That said, none of them have Wagner’s capabilities and it will take quite some time for them to get to that level. It’s not just a question of throwing money at other groups so they can scale up, it’s also a question of experience and knowledge which you can’t gain overnight.

‘At the moment, it seems like Wagner circles are not over-reacting and waiting to see what the commanders have to say.

‘They might say that they want to make sure the Kremlin doesn’t get away with this, or, more likely, that it is a battle not worth fighting.

‘Their best opportunity to depose Putin was when they were about to march on Moscow, and my opinion is that Putin was much better prepared for them than some were saying at the time.’

The last known image of Prigozhin shows him alone holding an assault rifle in a desert environment, possibly in Africa.

The group’s footprint on the continent, alongside the Middle East and Europe, includes Libya, Mali, Sudan and the Central African Republic.

A list of sanctioned Wagnerites published by the UK last month throws up a number of relatively low-profile individuals, such as Ivan Aleksandrovitch Maslov, who is alleged to have overseen a massacre in Mali.

‘The process of fighters signing over to the MoD [Ministry of Defence] was already happening, but it was having problems transferring a significant number of people,’ Bertina said.

‘Most people joined Wagner because they were tired of the MoD, and it has been difficult to get those people onboard.

‘While the GRU [Russian military intelligence] took over Wagner’s operations in Syria, the group retained its operations in Africa after the mutiny.

‘The Wagner mercenaries were saying it was business as usual.

‘Now, that might change. On the one hand, there is a question of how much they can operate without the MoD’s support, while on the other hand, there is a question of how much the MoD can control them.’

Putin is widely suspected of orchestrating the crash, with speculation arising that the jet could have been downed by a bomb hidden in a crate of wine.

The Russian president yesterday expressed his ‘sincere condolences’ to the families of the 10 who died, including three crew.

Bertina suspects that the relative ease with which Prigozhin, known as Putin’s former chef, was able to travel internationally after his brazen show of defiance may have been down to the Kremlin’s ruthless security apparatus biding its time in the shadows.

‘The Russian state and security services may have spent two months getting ready to decapitate the Wagner leadership and lulled Prigozhin into a false sense of security,’ he said. ‘This may have included dealing with the ramifications of eliminating him and drawing up contingency plans.’

Open-source intelligence from Prigozhin’s ‘troll farm’ social media accounts may also point at a Kremlin hit, according to Bertina.

‘Bot accounts linked to Wagner’s troll factories have become very expedient for the Russian state since Prigozhin’s death, which suggests they may have been taken over,’ he said. ‘They are blaming the West for the assassination, a narrative they took up as soon as Prigozhin died, which suggests this may have been planned out in advance.’

Emily Ferris, of the Royal United Services Institute, also pinpoints Africa as a key shaping ground for the mercenary group in the aftermath of Prigozhin’s suspected assassination.

The Research Fellow told Metro.co.uk: ‘If true, this is a blow to Wagner’s senior leadership, and has the most implications for its operations in Africa.

‘Wagner troops have either been absorbed into the MoD or are in a holding pattern in Belarus since the rebellion, so they have not been in action for two months now. Given the importance to the Kremlin of the Africa branch of Wagner – which plays a key role in managing Russia’s foreign policy stance abroad – it’s likely the Kremlin will attempt to restructure the grouping and try to maintain it.’

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov today described allegations that the Kremlin ordered Prigozhin’s death as an ‘absolute lie’.

He told reporters that there had been ‘lots of speculation’ about the crash and dismissed ‘Western talk’ that Putin was to blame.

The Russian president has said an investigation into the incident will be carried out ‘in full and taken right to the end’.

MORE : Putin faces a ‘dangerous idea’ even if Prigozhin has been eliminated

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