The Wagner group appeared to be continuing some of its operations on Monday, with recruitment centres open and fighters returning to their bases, as the group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, made his first public comments since abandoning his armed mutiny.
In an audio recording, Prigozhin made no mention of his whereabouts or those of his fighters. Nor did he confirm any plans to exile himself to Belarus as had been announced as part of a settlement supposedly negotiated with the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko.
There has been no visual confirmation of Wagner units’ movements but a source with direct knowledge of the situation said some had returned to their bases in the Russian-occupied area of eastern Ukraine, as was announced by Prigozhin on Saturday.
“They are recovering, eating and repairing their gear after the military march,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They do not appear to know what will happen to them either. But they are still fully armed.”
In Moscow on Monday, some Russian officials called for the group to be disarmed. Viktor Sobolev, a member of the Duma defence committee, said: “We should definitely remove their weapons. We can’t just leave an armed group of people that have already participated in a rebellion in the rear of our troops.”
Representatives at five Wagner recruitment centres across Russia, including in Moscow, Samara and Novosibirsk, told the Guardian that the mercenary group’s offices were open for business as usual.
In Novosibirsk, Russia’s third biggest city, advertising posters were again hung at the entrance to the Wagner recruitment centre, having been taken down during Prigozhin’s rebellion, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
“Everything is as usual, work continues,” a Wagner representative from Samara told the Guardian over the phone. The representative stressed that the prospective fighters would sign their contracts with Wagner and not the ministry of defence.
Rybar, a well-connected pro-Kremlin military analysis channel on Telegram, said that “everything was going on as normal in Molkino”, referring to Wagner’s training facility in the southern Krasnodar region. “Wagner’s recruiting campaigns throughout the country continue … despite all the commotion,” Rybar added.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, moved to reassure allies in Africa that thousands of Wagner fighters deployed to the continent would not be withdrawn.
The fact that Wagner has not been immediately disbanded after an unprecedented weekend in which its fighters marched on Moscow, shooting at least six army helicopters in the process, appears to suggest that the Kremlin has not made up its mind about the group’s future.
“Everything points to the fact that that they don’t know what to do with all of Prigozhin’s operations,” said Denis Korotkov, a leading Russian expert on the Wagner group.
Korotkov said Prigozhin had over the years built Wagner into a vast force that has been active on several continents, making it “tricky” to dismantle in a day. “Events unfolded so quickly that there wasn’t a plan in place for what to do with Prigozhin and Wagner,” Korotkov said.
Marat Gabidullin, a former Wagner commander, doubted that the group could exist without the leadership of Prigozhin, who is believed to be extremely popular among his fighters.
“If they remove Prigozhin from Wagner then that’s no longer Wagner as we know it but a pathetic imitation,” said Gabidullin, who has written a memoir about his time in the paramilitary organisation. “Very few Wagner soldiers will sign up for a Wagner without him.”
Questions remain regarding the exact number of fighters involved in the mutiny. When Prigozhin announced his revolt on Friday evening, he said he commanded a force of 25,000 troops. Gabidullin said Prigozhin had probably inflated the figure but added that even a much smaller force would have posed a considerable challenge to the Russian army.
“Just 5,000 Wagner troops could already present a major challenge for the Russian government. These are some of the best-trained fighters, especially when it comes to urban battles. Lots of blood would have been spilled neutralising them,” he said.
Meanwhile, several prominent figures involved in Russia’s war on Ukraine stepped up their attacks on Prigozhin, revealing some of the longer-held frustrations they had with the Wagner chief and his group.
Alexander Khodakovsky, the head of the pro-Moscow Vostok Battalion in the Donbas, recalled how Prigozhin used to refer to the Russian troops as the “pig army”.
Others called for the execution of the mercenary chief, who was awarded the title of hero of the Russian Federation just last year. Igor Strelkov, a retired Russian special operations officer and popular military blogger, said that it was “simply necessary to hang Prigozhin”.
Similar messages were repeated on Russian television, the most important source of information for average Russians. On a popular weekend talkshow, Andrey Gurulyov, a retired Russian colonel general and Duma deputy, said Prigozhin and the group’s alleged co-founder Dmitry Utkin should “receive the bullet”. “There’s no other option,” Gurulyov said.
Russian television aired footage of the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, reportedly “visiting the forward command post of one of the formations of the western group of troops”. In the footage, Shoigu was seen riding in a vehicle and arriving at a command post, where he listened to reports from officers and pored over a battlefield map.
The footage was probably filmed before Prigozhin’s revolt took place but nevertheless showed tacit government support for Shoigu, whom Prigozhin vowed to oust with his uprising.
Shoigu’s appearance on state television did not bode well for Prigozhin’s future, said a former high-ranking defence ministry official who frequently met Prigozhin.
Describing Prigozhin as an ambitious, ruthless and risk-taking figure, the former official believed Prigozhin overstepped by going against Putin.
“Prigozhin is addicted to risk,” the former official said. “But like most addicts, he did not have his addiction under control.”
