Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have survived — for now — the mutiny launched by onetime ally Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group mercenaries last weekend.
Mr. Putin’s top generals may not be so lucky.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and top commanders were already on shaky ground given the poor performance of Russian forces in the now 16-month campaign in Ukraine, an invasion characterized by confusing lines of command, logistical failings, equipment shortages and deep morale problems in the ranks.
Mr. Prigozhin and his fighters may have been banished to Belarus, but his criticisms of Russia’s military leadership seem likely to resonate for months to come.
“The Russian armed forces are not monolithic, but consist of a multitude of rival groups competing for position and sources of income,” said Mikhail Komin, a Russia analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in an analysis of the tepid response Mr. Prigozhin’s revolt generated among many in the Russian military. “Prigozhin’s mutiny revealed the scale of the crisis within the Russian Armed Forces, which are disillusioned by constant failures and tired of war, and within the military and security elites more broadly.”
Already, the disappearance from public view of two key Russian commanders — Gen. Sergei Surovikin, a former commander of the Ukraine campaign seen as close to Mr. Prigozhin, and General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov, the current head of Ukrainian operations and a frequent target of Mr. Prigozhin’s fury — in the six days since the uprising has sparked speculation in Moscow and the West that one or both have been purged in the wake of recent events.
There have been unconfirmed press reports by the opposition Moscow Times and others that Gen. Surovikin, still nominally the deputy commander of Russian troops in Ukraine, had advanced knowledge of the Wagner Group uprising and has been jailed for failing to head it off.
Mr. Surovikin was last seen in a video Saturday appealing to Mr. Prigozhin — with whom he had worked when both were fighting in Syria — to stand down.
Asked directly about the status of Mr. Putin’s top generals, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov Thursday pointedly declined to comment on the speculation over Gen. Surovikin and other top officials who had worked with Mr. Prigozhin in the past.
“The issue isn’t my prerogative, and I have nothing to say on that,” Mr. Peskov said.
Russian military blogs, many of them supportive of the Ukraine war but bluntly critical of the military leadership, have been rife with speculation this week on the soap opera surrounding Russia’s top commanders.
A former Russian Defense Ministry spokesman who blogs on the Telegram messaging network as “Rybar” said the Prigozhin uprising has sparked wholesale changes among the embattled Russian brass. The fact that many Russian military units did little or nothing to stop the Wagner Group force as it captured a major military outpost in Rostov-on-Don and got within 125 miles of Moscow before being called off has only fueled the infighting, Rybar reported.
“The armed insurgency by the Wagner private military company has become a pretext for a massive purge in the ranks of the Russian armed forces,” the blogger wrote.
Mr. Putin has appeared at public events with Mr. Shoigu during the week, suggesting he was not about to replace a longtime aide despite the criticisms from Mr. Prigozhin and others.
But analysts said the fallout from the Wagner Group mutiny has left the Russian president with two unpalatable choices: Stick with the current commanders who are widely seen as having failed so far in the Ukraine fighting or appear to bow to Mr. Prigozhin’s pressure and make major changes in personnel.
Complicating the decision is the widespread feeling both in Russia and the West that the bald, imposing Gen. Surovikin, who earned the nickname “General Armageddon” for his scorched-earth approach to fighting in Syria, was the most effective of the many commanders Mr. Putin has put in charge of the Ukraine fighting. He was credited with improving Russia’s defensive lines after a successful Ukrainian offensive last fall and directed the damaging bombing campaign that targeted Ukraine’s key infrastructure before his demotion in January.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, which has followed the internal politics of the Russian military establishment closely, said in a report this week that the Kremlin was unlikely to remove Gen. Gerasimov entirely from the chain of command because it would reflect badly on Mr. Putin himself. But with his authority suddenly in question in the days after the revolt, Mr. Putin will have to walk a delicate line.
“The Kremlin will likely attempt to balance a desire to mitigate the widespread disdain for [the Ministry of Defense] establishment figures that fueled Wagner’s rebellion while also trying to disempower those who may have sympathized with the rebellion,” the ISW analysis said.
Questions of loyalty have been raised about those below the command level as well: Russian military bloggers, the ISW reported, have “claimed that Russian pilots who refused to strike the Wagner convoys and Russian border guards who refused to open fire on Wagner are now facing unspecified criminal prosecution. The Kremlin may punish lower-ranking Russian servicemen to create additional scapegoats for their response to the rebellion.”
On the battlefield
Yet another unknown is how many of Mr. Prigozhin’s estimated 25,000 mercenary fighters will take up the Kremlin’s offer to renounce their rebellion and agree to fight under the command of the regular Russian army in Ukraine.
Ukrainian military officials have reported slow but steady progress in their much-touted spring counteroffensive designed to drive back Russian occupying forces in the south and east, but the stunning events in Russia since June 24 have not translated into a major shift on the battlefield.
Kyiv has tried to portray the offensive as going largely according to plan, noting that thousands of Ukrainian troops who were trained for the assault have yet to enter the fighting.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar told a national television broadcast that the country’s forces had made advances in sectors in the south designated by two occupied towns – Berdiansk and Mariupol.
“Every day, there is an advance,” Ms. Maliar said. “Yes, the advances are slow, but they are sure.”
She spoke as former Vice President Mike Pence made a surprise trip Thursday to Ukraine in a show of support for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Mr. Pence is the first of the 2024 Republican presidential contenders to make the trip to Ukraine at a time when support for the war has become a divisive issue in the battle for the GOP nomination next year.
“Beyond the human loss and the heartbreak that we have seen from this unprovoked Russian invasion, my message to the American people is simply that it is vitally important that America continue to lead on the world stage — that we stand up to the kind of naked aggression we have seen here,” Mr. Pence said in an interview with NBC News in Kyiv.
“I truly do believe that by giving the Ukrainian military the resources that we have over the last year and a half to push back on this Russian invasion that the West has really shown its strength — that the American people have shown our commitment to freedom,” he said. “The war here in Ukraine is not our war, but freedom is our fight.”
Former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the two front-runners in the 2024 GOP race, have expressed skepticism of bottomless U.S. support for Ukraine.
Mr. Trump, in a CNN town hall in May, refused to say whether he wants Ukraine or Russia to prevail in the war. “I want everybody to stop dying. They’re dying. Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying,” he said. “And I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”
Mr. Pence and fellow 2024 Republican hopefuls former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott have rallied behind Ukraine.
Mr. Pence while in Kyiv received a briefing from Ukraine officials on the war’s progress and on Russia’s human rights violations, according to his adviser. The former vice president also participated in events commemorating some of the war dead.
Mr. Pence said a Ukrainian victory over Russia would force the rest of the world to rethink acts of “unprovoked aggressive” and send “a very clear message to countries like China as they contemplate their own military ambitions across the Asian Pacific.”
• Seth McLaughlin contributed to this report.
