Infighting among Russia’s military leadership is fueling setbacks on the battlefield, as leaders continue to criticize how President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine is being handled, experts say.
In recent weeks, Putin’s longtime allies including Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, and Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Russian mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group, dubbed “Putin’s Chef,” have publicly criticized Russia’s defense ministry and its head, Sergei Shoigu.
Mercenaries from Prigozhin’s Wagner Group are reportedly supporting Russian troops in efforts to capture Bakhmut, a strategic town in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine.
Jaroslava Barbieri, doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham noted that Prigozhin likely has “ulterior motives” in pouring troops into the region.
“He sees it as an opportunity to undermine Shoigu further and show the Kremlin the combat value of the Wagner Group while regular Russian military units continue to lose ground in other combat zones,” Barbieri said.
She added that Shoigu recently fired a deputy defense minister who had reportedly facilitated lucrative contracts for the Wagner Group. “So this is in part a personal vendetta, too,” she said.
Prigozhin and Kadyrov have vilified Shoigu for a series of disastrous defeats that have left Russian forces in retreat, Barbieri added, referring to counteroffensives by Ukraine that have seen troops recapture swathes of territory in the south and northeast.
The continued attacks in Bakhmut also come amid gains by Ukraine in the Kherson region.
Prigozhin is sponsoring the formation of a volunteer battalion recruited by Russian war criminal Igor Girkin, a former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer.
The military group could “pose a threat to Putin’s rule.”
“Prigozhin continues to accrue power and is setting up a military structure parallel to the Russian Armed Forces, which may come to pose a threat to Putin’s rule—at least within the information space.”
Prigozhin is effectively building a “constituency” of supporters and his own fighting force that are not under the direct control of the Russian military or the Ministry of Defense.
The assessment notes that Prigozhin holds a uniquely advantageous position within the Russian state structure and information space that allows him to expand his constituency in the country more readily than the higher military command.
Prigozhin can freely promote himself and his forces while criticizing Kremlin officials or the Russian Armed Force without fear of push back.