The Russian warlord whose 24-hour mutiny provoked the worst disaster to roil the nation in three a long time has been packed off to an unsure exile — together with the foul-mouthed critiques of the Russian navy that gained him legions of followers, particularly throughout the ranks.
Yet the issues recognized by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the chief of the Wagner mercenary group, didn’t disappear with him, navy analysts say, and are more likely to proceed to fester, enraging troops and additional reducing already sickly morale.
These embrace an total lack of command and management, inflexible hierarchy, corruption, tangled logistics, gear shortages and the absence of an sincere, public evaluation of the struggle in Ukraine. The emergence of a number of different non-public navy corporations like Wagner guarantees to additional complicate issues.
“If Prigozhin is gone, the problems will not go with him,” mentioned Dmitri Kuznets, a navy analyst for Meduza, an unbiased Russian news web site. “They are here to stay, this is a bigger problem than Prigozhin himself.”
During the rebellion, the Telegram messaging app erupted with feedback from those that supported Mr. Prigozhin’s diatribes towards the navy management — notably these aimed toward Defense Minister Sergei Ok. Shoigu and Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, chief of the overall employees — whereas additionally condemning his mutiny.
“Do you think that guys who ask for scopes, for example, are very flattering about big generals? Of course not,” wrote a navy blogger who makes use of the title “Z-War Geeks” and has greater than 760,000 followers on Telegram. However, he mentioned, most troopers distinguish between their nation and the state. “The Motherland is unconditional,” he wrote. “You can’t betray it, or lose it.”
The response total revealed an opposition bloc amongst troopers, the volunteers who provide them and the Telegram group cheering on the struggle. “We knew that before, but we did not understand the scale of it,” mentioned Mr. Kuznets. The rebellion, he added, highlighted the hole between the commanders and the troopers preventing the struggle, who usually endorse the concept that the military is badly run and headed for defeat.
“We can see that they agree with Prigozhin in general, but they don’t agree with his methods,” he added.
In some methods, the issues with the struggle transcend the folks concerned and lie throughout the construction and tradition of the Russian navy.
Reforms begun greater than a decade in the past have been meant to create a smaller, leaner, extra versatile military. It was not constructed to overcome a big European nation, so from that perspective President Vladimir V. Putin assigned the navy a activity past its grasp, mentioned Aleksandr Golts, a Russian navy analyst.
“Russia had forces that can win a short, local conflict,” he mentioned. “That’s it.”
But the reformers fell wanting attaining larger flexibility, which requires giving decision-making energy to commanders within the discipline. That ran up towards deep-seated cultural norms, notably a penchant for inflexible, hierarchical command construction and a callousness about troopers’ casualties that some say is a legacy of Soviet occasions.
This month, the Ministry of Defense moved to claim management over the proliferating variety of non-public navy teams, insisting that all of them signal contracts by July 1. That helped spark Mr. Prigozhin to mutiny, however it additionally highlighted a problem that thus far has been mentioned principally amongst navy bloggers and a few Russian news retailers.
The crackdown “was a step in the right direction,” from a navy perspective mentioned Mr. Golts, whose report for the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies on the potential for civil struggle in Russia had predicted an identical rebellion simply days earlier than it occurred.
The variety of non-public armies stays small. Gennady Timchenko, a rich Putin crony, began one known as Redoubt. It was initially supposed to guard his Stroytransgaz vitality facility in Syria, however it started recruiting folks for Ukraine after the struggle started, based on Russian news studies.
Mr. Prigozhin himself introduced consideration to the truth that Gazprom, the state vitality firm, had began three non-public armed teams: Potok, Fakel and Plamya, or Stream, Torch and Flame. Their independence from the Defense Ministry stays murky.
“Those people who have money think that it’s an awesome topic now — to collect P.M.C.s,” Mr. Prigozhin mentioned in an interview broadcast on Telegram in April, referring to personal navy corporations.
Although non-public militias stay technically unlawful in Russia, and the federal government is now attempting to rein them in, the truth that Wagner was paid practically $1 billion for roughly the primary 12 months of the struggle affords an incentive to create such teams. And as Wagner simply confirmed, they carry huge potential to create havoc.
After the revolt, “all people with arms in their hands understood that they can use those arms in their own interests, not in the interests of the state,” Mr. Golts mentioned. “It was a very dramatic pivot. Prigozhin crossed the Rubicon.”
In Washington, senior Pentagon officers mentioned the Kremlin’s response to the mutiny underscored the weaknesses within the Russian navy’s command-and-control construction — its lack of ability to react rapidly to surprising developments, and poor coordination between the navy and different safety companies.
U.S. navy officers have been surprised that an armored column of Wagner forces superior inside 125 miles of Moscow. The mercenaries met no resistance on the bottom, however shot down half a dozen Russian navy helicopters and an Il-22 airborne command put up that engaged the column.
Pentagon officers mentioned that this mirrored as soon as once more the shortage of coordination between Russian air and floor forces. But the muted response may additionally have been an indication that many officers and troopers have been sympathetic to the mutineers, navy analysts mentioned.
Still, Mr. Prigozhin overplayed his hand, presumably considering that months of telephone calls from officers grousing concerning the Defense Ministry, meant that some would be a part of the revolt. “I think Prigozhin overestimated his support — disdain for Gerasimov does not equal support for Prigozhin,” mentioned Dara Massicot, a senior coverage researcher on the RAND Corporation.
General Gerasimov changed Gen. Sergei Surovikin in January as commander of Russian forces preventing Ukraine. General Surovikin and Mr. Prigozhin are allies since working collectively on Russia’s navy operations in Syria.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that U.S. officers mentioned that General Surovikin had advance information of the rebellion, and so they have been attempting to find out if he helped with the planning and if another senior officers have been concerned.
U.S. navy officers mentioned there have been no indications that the mutiny had brought on Moscow to tug navy items off the entrance traces in Ukraine. But it may adversely influence Russia’s battlefield efficiency, analysts and Pentagon officers mentioned.
In Ukraine, the Russian navy has been holding its personal in current weeks towards the long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Strategic defenses — the minefields, trench networks and tank traps that the Russians have spent months constructing — have up to now blunted the Ukrainian effort.
Offense is one other matter. Russia has by no means addressed the command, communications and logistical failures that undermined what was speculated to be its preliminary lightning assault to grab Ukraine.
Top navy posts have been a revolving door, with Mr. Putin sidelining General Gerasimov for a time in favor of General Surovikin after which reversing himself in January — regardless that General Surovikin had earned reward for his skilled dealing with of the Russian retreat from Kherson.
A pervading sense that high-level commanders aren’t held accountable can pose a substantive problem to any navy’s skill to command and management forces on the battlefield. Analysts say the shortage of accountability undermined the authority of Mr. Shoigu and General Gerasimov within the ranks.
“It made both of them look weak,” mentioned Mr. Lee. “Clearly there are a lot of systemic issues in the Russian military that are attributable to the leadership,” he added. “The reason Prigozhin had any support at all is that his criticisms of the Russian Ministry of Defense — many of them are reasonable.”
In the times after the revolt, Mr. Shoigu appeared a number of occasions in public — an indication that he would keep in his place — whereas studies of a widespread purge within the navy started to emerge from Russia’s navy bloggers.
The lagging morale among the many rank-and-file will solely be worsened by the infighting and Mr. Putin’s response to the mutiny, if the early studies are correct. “It did not give added morale to the mostly demoralized army,” mentioned Pavel Luzin, a Russian navy analyst.
Reporting was contributed by Paul Sonne in Berlin, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper in Washington, and Alina Lobzina in London.
Source: www.nytimes.com