CONTRARY TO WHAT SOME MEDIA SAY, RUSSIA BECAME STRONGER AFTER FAILED MUTINY
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Pragmatically speaking, “exiling” Wagner group to Belarus serves Russian and Belarusian interests.
Written by Uriel Araujo, researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts
Much has been written about Yevgeny Prigozhin (Wagner Group leader) mutiny. After the failed Rostov uprising, the mutineers handed over their weapons, and, on June 27, Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed Prigozhin was in Belarus. Prigozhin’s troops briefly occupied the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don last month, and President Lukashenko, together with Russian President Vladimir Putin, negotiated a deal to put an end to it.
Historically, the presence of mercenary groups with varied legal statuses in armed confrontations is nothing new, and to make too much of such groups in Russia can only be described as Western hypocrisy. The US Blackwater private military company (as it was formerly known) is infamous, for example, for its role in the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Bagdah, Iraq.
Back to Prigozhin’s short rebellion, contrary to what part of the Western media and US officials such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken have been saying, the episode has not revealed Moscow’s “weakness”. The Russian presidency is now stronger, as American journalist Seymour Hersh wrote on June 29: “Prigozhin’s revolt fizzled out within a day, as he fled to Belarus, with a no-prosecution guarantee, and his mercenary army was mingled into the Russian army. There was no march on Moscow, nor was there a significant threat to Putin’s rule.”
Conspiracy theories have been circulating, without any evidence whatsoever, as is often the case, about the whole Wagner affair in Rostov being a stage “psy-op”. In the real world, when a state successfully and efficiently neutralizes a crisis and even reap advantages to its national interests out of it, this of course does not necessarily mean the state manufactured the whole crisis in the first place. It would seem however that nowadays anything goes for the sake of Russophobia: even accusing the Russian President and key Russian officials of colluding with mutineers to shoot down Russian pilots.
What is one to make of Belarus’ role in the negotiations, in any case? On June 1, Lukashenko stated the West was plotting a coup to overthrow his government – something which has always been in the West’s interest. On June 14, Lukashenko said that his country would “take care” of Ukrainian saboteur’s raids and provocations, mentioning Ukrainian activities in the Belgorod region as an example of such. He stressed, however, that a “full-blown aggression” against his country, such as sending “troops”, and not just “small units” would be a “red-line”. The day before, June 13, he had already said that an “aggression” against Belarus would be the only valid reason for employing nuclear weapons: “I believe it is unlikely that anyone would want to wage war against a country that has such weapons. It is a weapon of deterrence. God forbid if I have to make a decision to use this weapon in modern times. But I won’t hesitate should there be an aggression against us”.
By doing so, the Belarusian leader implicitly hinted that he was expecting “Belgorod-like incursions” against his nation.
I wrote in May about Zelensky’s bolder plans to occupy Russian villages. Kiev in any case seems to have started deploying proxy organizations to carry out sabotage in some Russian oblasts (provinces). In May 22, Ukrainian sabotage groups were reported to have tried to break into the Belgorod region, in Russia, where they carried out terrorist attacks, as part of attempts to divert attention from the Bakhmut area. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the goal of it was “to reduce the political impact of Ukraine’s loss of Artyomovsk.”
If any extremist group bombed a shelter, in the West, housing civilian refugees, it would certainly be a news story worldwide – and yet, on Western press, not much has been written about the fact that a Ukrainian drone bombed a shelter that was housing temporarily evacuated Russian civilians in the city of Belgorod. As a result, three people, including a child, died, and at least 11 were injured.
It has also been reported that the so-called “Freedom of Russian Legion” (FRL) and the “Russian Volunteer Corps” (RVC) paramilitary organizations were behind such developments in Belgorod. These two Ukraine-based groups have claimed responsibility for attacks against Russian civilians in the region. The FRL was declared a terrorist group by Russia’s Supreme Court earlier this year. The RVC, in turn, is led by infamous neo-Nazi Denis Kapustin, whose group, recruited from the ranks of hooligan gangism, is said to be one of the most dangerous neo-Nazi organizations globally, according to Telegraph’s journalist James Kilner. Ukrainian military intelligence agency confirmed that the RVC has a unit within the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.
In March, the RVC had already claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks in the Russian villages of Lyubechane and Sushany, in Bryansk Oblast, which shares a Western border with Belarus. It is against this kind of threat to national and domestic security that Belarussian President Lukashenko might be worried – and the know-how and skills of Wagner group combatants can certainly be useful.
Thus, pragmatically speaking, as political analyst Andrew Korybko puts it, “exiling” Prigozhin and his people to Belarus serves Russian and Belarusian interests. From the Russian point of view, it makes sense to stop a rebellion without further bloodshed and to employ the “pardoned” mutineers into human assets for a neighboring Union State ally such as Belarus. This – and not any wild conspiracy theory – explains Lukashenko’s suggestion, on May 30, that Belarusian forces could learn from Wagner group combat experience.
MORE ON THE TOPIC:
- China And Others Grapple With Understanding What The Wagner Group Revolt Means
- Did America Really Know About ‘Wagner’ Rebellion Before It Happened?
- Russian Foreign Minister Slams West Over Reaction To Wagner Mutiny
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