ANALYSIS – Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the notorious Russian paramilitary outfit known as the Wagner Group has been in the news a lot lately.
Often, he brags about his group's battlefield exploits in Ukraine, but more recently, it's due to his harsh criticisms of the Russian oligarchy and military establishment.
He has been openly derisive and insulting toward the Kremlin leaders and the flagging war effort.
This is unheard of in Vladimir Putin's Russia where critics often end up falling from high windows or die of suicides caused by multiple gunshots.
The Wagner Group has been called Putin's private army since it is supposedly made up of mercenaries and ex-convicts. However, others note that the group is a tool of the state, formed and directed by Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU.
This makes the force far more dangerous.
Along with the unprecedented cross-border attacks into Russia by Ukraine-backed Russian partisans in Russia's Belgorod border region, this volatile mix could be creating the perfect storm against Putin.
Some say Putin is facing a growing threat of a coup from the Wagner army, which combined with potential anti-Kremlin rebellions in the Russian border regions, poses the most serious threat to Putin's rule in decades.
And it's not just Western critics, Ukrainian officials or analysts who are saying it.
Igor Strelkov is the nom de guerre of a Russian war blogger. His real name is Igor Girkin.
An ex-defense minister of the Russian-controlled Donetsk People's Republic in Ukraine, and a Putin supporter, he warns that Prigozhin is acting with unidentified figures within Putin's circle in a bid to oust the dictator, according to the Daily Mail.
“Prigozhin has declared war on part of the military and state elite,” he said. ‘Naturally, he is not alone. If he was just by himself, he would have been eliminated.”
‘He is a member of the ruling mafia, of one of its groupings,” Strelkov adds.
And he should know.
Strelkov is an ex-FSB (Russian security service successor to the KGB) colonel who was key to Russia seizing Crimea and part of the Donbas in 2014.
He has long lobbied for a full Russian mobilization and martial law.
He claims that since the Wagner army is pulling out of the embattled Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, those troops could be used to remove Putin. “Wagner is urgently withdrawn to rear bases…The danger of a looming coup is clear,” he stated.
Prigozhin has denied the coup rumors, implying that he lacks sufficient personnel to do so.
However, as reported by Newsweek, his denial sowed more doubt and intrigue.
The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington D.C., noted in its latest analysis of the conflict in Ukraine on Monday that Prigozhin vaguely implied that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu could stage a coup as he has access to Russian special forces.
Meanwhile, the former FSB officer adds that the ‘smuta' – pre-revolutionary turmoil – in Russia has already begun. “If Prigozhin remains the head of Wagner, the mutiny will come quickly and radically,” Strelkov said in a video posted by WarTranslated.
And he isn't alone. Former Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov, turned Putin critic, argues that Putin's overthrow will more likely come from the edge of Russia's empire in regions bordering Ukraine that are falling to anti-Kremlin groups.
I wrote about this here.
Mark Galeotti, author of several books on the Russian military, said the major anti-Kremlin groups range from liberals and anarchists to neo-Nazis.
They include the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) and the Freedom of Russia Legion, the National Republican Army (NRA) and the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists.
The Daily Mail reported Gallyamov as saying:
The mood in Belgorod, Voronezh, Bryansk and other regions located along the border is now most likely much more oppositional than in the country as a whole.
The war hit them much harder than the capital, and such an unequal distribution of hardships creates a serious negative potential.
I think that the Belgorod region residents now have a feeling that Moscow has incited them into an adventure and left them to the mercy of fate.
Such interpretations destroy loyalty literally completely.
According to Gallyamov, this means that local residents will not show any particular resistance to the advancing anti-Kremlin units, especially since they are seen as Russians.
While he doesn't predict that anti-Kremlin forces will storm Moscow, he does believe the current turmoil will lead to a large-scale political crisis in Russia.
“The situation may develop in such a way that it will not even be necessary to take the Kremlin by storm,” he says. Instead, under extreme pressure, Putin may simply hand over power to a successor.
Meanwhile, Strelkov, who has 800,000 Telegram followers, including many mid-ranking Russian soldiers, warns more ominously: “No later than late summer, the internal political situation in the country might change beyond recognition.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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I have often considered that Putin might not be the leader of the nasty coalition that attacks Israel in the soon coming battle of Gog of Magog. This seems more possible now!
That’s ridiculous. Israels enemies are the bordering Muslim states. Russia would be foolish in the extreme to attack a country with nuclear weapons and the willingness to use them in self-defense.
I expect the fall of Putin and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine will happen suddenly and with little or no warning. Putin is leading Russia into a disaster of epic proportions and powerful forces are already rising against him. It may very well begin with Putin’s assassination. It is not too late for Russia to sell its abundant gas, oil, minerals, timber, and much else to Europe and become a very wealthy oil-rich country and stop wasting lives and treasure on a military it no longer needs. The wise thing for Russia is to end foreign invasions, stop building useless weapons, and eventually join in an alliance against China with the U.S., Europe, and most of Asia.
Very good post! The fall of Putin will be like a bolt from the blue, if it happens. Yet I always fall back on the old Russian proverb: ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.’ If Putin, as horrid as he is, should fall, who will we get in his place? What I fear is a new totalitarian that will make the old Soviet Union look like a cakewalk.
Russian Revolution 2??