The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 30th June 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 30th June 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Life is returning to normal in Moscow following the Wagner mutiny last weekend that began as high drama with an abortive “March on Moscow” but ended in low farce with Wagnerians returning to their barracks and their boss Evgeny Prigozhin going into involuntary exile in Belarus.
No one knows exactly what Putin offered Prigozhin to end the crisis apart from a safe-conduct to leave the country with his immense wealth untouched and an apparent amnesty to all the Wagner troops.
Wagner, the Russian ‘foreign legion’ which has played a major role in the Ukraine war, has tanks, anti-aircraft systems and warplanes under its control. They now will have hand over these arms as part of the post-mutiny arrangement, which also requires any Wagnerian who wishes to continue service to join the ranks of regular Russian units.
At the moment, people can only speculate on why Prigozhin decided to bite the hand that has fed him for so long. The Wagner boss did little to hide his contempt for Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, whom he blamed for incompetence and corruption on the front.
Prigozhin is a billionaire who made his money in the gambling and catering industry, but none of the other oligarchs backed him apart from a handful that broke with Putin and fled the country to do the imperialists’ bidding in Western Europe and the USA. He then went into the mercenary business, setting up the Wagner private military company in 2014 with the support of the Putin government.
In Western circles Prigozhin was once seen as a protégé of the Russian president. Although that may once have been true, it was clear this year that the Wagner boss was being frozen out of the corridors of power in the Kremlin.
Some say that’s why he played his last card. Others look at the suspicious timing of the revolt – in the middle of a large-scale Ukrainian offensive – and draw other conclusions.
Viktor Zolotov, the commander of the National Guard of Russia, thinks the West was clearly behind the Prigozhin mutiny.
Speaking to journalists on Tuesday on the sidelines of an awards ceremony at the Kremlin, Zolotov said he was certain that the mutiny “was inspired by Western special services, because, as they said, they knew about it several weeks ahead of time.”
Media reports claim that US intelligence had prior knowledge about possible trouble coming from Prigozhin and his Wagnerians. But the Biden administration vehemently denies any involvement in the revolt, which it called a domestic Russian affair.
Zolotov claims that Prigozhin’s camp had been deliberately leaking “focused” information about a possible mutiny coming sometime between last Thursday and Sunday. He further suggested that Western agents may have been directly involved in conducting the operation.
The mutiny began on Friday evening and dissolved the next day when Prigozhin accepted a Belarus-mediated deal with the Russian government. Wagner troops had entered the city of Rostov-on-Don and were on the move towards Moscow by the time the insurrection was aborted.
Back on the front it’s business as usual as the Russians battle to stave off the long-expected Ukrainian summer offensive. But the Ukrainian army, beefed up with new NATO armour and rockets, has still to make any significant breakthroughs.
After weeks of attempts to break through Russian lines, they’ve only managed to take a few villages on the front and secure a bridgehead over the Dnieper river. And they’ve paid an horrendous price for such meagre gains.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defence, between 4–21 June the Ukrainians lost more than 13,000 troops and 246 tanks, including 13 supplied by the West, and 152 infantry fighting vehicles.