Doubts over mercenaries’ loyalty may stop Kremlin from using them again in military offensives

By Colin Freeman IN KRAMATORSK 25 June 2023 • 6:55pm

The chaos inflicted on Russia’s armed forces by the Wagner Group coup attempt may prevent it from mounting any further serious military offensives in Ukraine, analysts said on Sunday night.

While the mercenary group’s boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has ordered his fighters to return to their front-line bases, doubts over the 25,000-strong force’s loyalty are likely to limit their future use to the Russian military’s high command.

Ben Hodges, a former US general, said that even if Wagner’s units were broken up and distributed across the rest of Russia’s military, regular army commanders would be unlikely to fully trust them.

“Wagner troops will either walk away or be distributed across the Russian Army as individual replacements, who will be under suspicion,” he wrote on Twitter.

Under the terms of the truce that made Prigozhin call off his coup attempt on Saturday, Wagner troops who took part in the mutiny will be offered immunity from prosecution, while others will be permitted to sign formal contracts with the Russian army.

It is unclear, though, how many will want to take up the offer – or whether Russian army commanders will really want them in their ranks.

“The whole coup business still seems very murky, but it means that many soldiers have now lost faith in their central command,” said Daniel Ridley, an ex-British soldier who runs the Trident Defence Initiative, a private training programme for Ukrainian forces.

“We may now never see another joint Russian offensive, and what territory Russia still has in Ukraine, they may now struggle to hold on to.”

Wagner’s forces have been involved in some of the heaviest fighting of the war, particularly in the gruelling 10-month battle around the Donbas city of Bakhmut, which the Kremlin has claimed as one of its few victories.

While much of that fighting has been done by Wagner’s ex-convict recruits, who have died in their thousands, the group’s hardcore of professional soldiers remains largely intact, Mr Ridley said.

It was their ranks, he added, not those of the ex-convicts, who appeared to have been leading the coup attempt in Russia.

Professional kit

“You could see that they had professional kit and looked good – these weren’t the convict troops,” he said. “They’re not a spent force at all, otherwise they wouldn’t have attempted the coup in the first place.”

That group’s professional expertise, he added, had been crucial to the Russian push around Donbas cities like Bakhmut and Soledar. Their successes, though, had also nurtured an esprit de corps that made them see themselves as separate from the Russian regulars.

“These people are loyal to Wagner, it’s quite a famous unit now,” he said. “They won’t lightly drop the Wagner patch to sign up for the Russian ministry of defence.”

In and around Bakhmut, where Wagner troops know the ground intimately, the Kremlin was still likely to have to use the Wagner force in some form. “They are willing to take losses and they are also very aggressive,” Mr Ridley added.

However, Russian army commanders are likely to now fear that if they order Wagner troops into any costly battles, they could risk a mutiny in the ranks that could spark a repeat of Saturday’s insurrection.