All the news coverage I have seen seems to focus on the coup itself.
Is there any reason to presume or suspect any immediate front line impacts? Other than in any operations the Wagner group might have been directly currently involved in? What had they been doing just before the march?
Defense against the Wagner group march on Moscow is not likely to involve pulling resources from front line operations. If nothing else they wouldn’t get there in time anyway.
Longer term is another speculation.
A relevant point is that Rostov, which Wagner already took over, was the Russian headquarters for the Ukrainian front. That has to have an impact, even with the dysfunctionality of the whole affair.
The front line is being closely watched by NATO and US satillites for any signs of troop movements that may benifit Ukraine. Any movement or weak points would be quickly capitalized on. Until then the Ukrainian army sits back and enjoys the show while continuing to do what they are doing.
When your enemy is f***ing up, don’t interrupt them. Keep the pressure on, but don’t interrupt.
Time for Ukraine and the West to roll out the red carpet for Piggy and Wagner on their route to Moscow. Would love to see America chip in with a lot of under-the-table intel and whatever helps Wagner keep rolling.
Prigozhin is bad news wherever he looks. I don’t think the US is going to aid the merciless evil guy who ran the troll farm that aimed to throw the election to trump. As was stated, the enemy of your enemy is … the enemy of your enemy. I think only popcorn is in order at present.
[Moderating]
This is the one non-Warning note I’ll give on this. This is a factual question about what is happening on the front lines of the Russia-Ukraine war. There are plenty of other threads on the other implications of Wagner’s march on Moscow. This is not them.
EDIT: This is directed primarily at @Ulfreida and @Velocity , so far. But the directive applies to everyone in the thread. Stay on topic.
There hasn’t been any obvious direct impact yet, but the situation is very fluid.
This is a great news site for the region.
There were apparently some missile attacks on Kiev overnight, so this has not stopped. Hopefully these attacks will be somewhat stymied in the next while as Russia’s attention is focused inward.
There’s a non-zero chance that Wagner flipped sides and is working in concert with Ukraine. They are, after all, a mercenary organization and appreciate the value of money.
Assuming that Ukraine knew of and helped to coordinate some of what is going on now, they could be running supplies to Prigozhin, providing him with extra troops, preparing to run up the road after him to Moscow, or keep where they are and doing what they’re doing to prevent the bulk of the Russian army from moving away. That last case doesn’t give us much insight on what’s been happening behind the scenes because that’s the same as what they would do if they weren’t working in collaboration with Wagner.
If we assume that they weren’t aware of and weren’t prepared for the coup, though, it would be a good time for a push. If Wagner flipped on its own, that goes back to basic statistics on troop losses and mutiny. Someone quoted it in some thread a while back that once you demolish a unit down to x% of their starting size, the morale plummets and they’re liable to go crazy. You need to rotate troops in and out of combat to keep the front line soldiers mentally stable. But, that means bringing low morale, angry, experienced soldiers - who want to get paid - back to the homeland. I wouldn’t be surprised that Russia hasn’t been doing that.
So, again, if Wagner flipped on its own then that’s a pretty good signal that the whole front is probably at about the breaking point, emotionally. With a coup going on back home, that’s only going to drop it lower.
A hard enough hit would almost certainly send the troops scurrying - with many going to join Prigozhin, potentially.
IMHO.
Middle attacks are not front line defending against the counteroffensive. They are simple terror tactics.
Troops will not likely be drawn from the front.
But it seems like the Russian military is very top down with little autonomy at middle to lower levels. The top has to be a bit distracted right now.
And minimally the frontline cannon fodder troops do have to be, as @Sage_Rat suggests, increasingly demoralized by this turn of events. AWOL in bigger numbers I can see.
I can find no reports yet though.
There have been unconfirmed reports of some Russian troops being moved off the Ukrainian front to support operations against Wagner and also reports of some Russian troops leaving the front to join Wagner. These are coming from my friend in Kyiv who is monitoring local media and should be taken with a healthy dose of salt.
Very true, it’s not only the HQ of the Russian Southern Military District, but also a vital supply hub for the southern part of the front lines and Crimea. Any statements from Prigozhin that his actions won’t affect the war in Ukraine aside, I can’t see this causing no disruption to Russian supplies in the southern part of the front, which is already under stress both with the consumption of supplies in the fighting and Ukrainian strikes at their supply lines and depots. Rostov has the added advantage of being part of Russia proper, and thus off limits for Ukraine to use Western supplied arms on.
I heard from a general on TV that a major problem on the front is mine fields, and that’s not going away. It has meant that the counter offensive is slow. Certainly it won’t help the already low morale of the Russian troops, and I suspect the Wagner troops are either gone or sitting on their hands.
This is not entirely relevant, but there is a report in today’s Times that US intelligence was predicting something like this and informed Ukraine. Not sure if there was any action they could have taken. But the Wagner group was an important part of the Russian defense of captured territory. It is hard to see the possible significance of the Wagner group’s moving to Belarus. Stay tuned.
It’s my understanding that Prigozhin is going to Belarus, and the Wagner army is expected to sign up with the Russian military and come under their command. This was part of the deal with Putin that Prigozhin agreed to.
He may have some number of personal bodyguards/ militia, but the entire Wagner army is not going with him.
The rank and file members of Wagner will probably regard signing up with the Russian military as a pretty bad idea. The likelihood of them being welcome is not good. Mercenaries are never well regarded by regular forced.
I would expect the majority of them to decamp to Belarus, which presents the Belarusians with a significant short to medium term problem. Longer term many of them are likely to either find mercenary work elsewhere, or filter back into Russia anonymously. It isn’t as if the Russian authorities have perfect knowledge of the members of Wagner. Moreover it appears that there are a few other private armies run by various oligarchs that would provide employment.
Those that were recruited from Russian prisons likely have a difficult set of choices. Staying away from any Russian authority is likely high in their minds. The assurances that they would not be going back to prison will be near worthless. Especially after the mutiny.
What makes you think they have a choice in this matter? The Russian Duma passed a law a couple weeks ago requiring all PMC personnel to sign contracts with the Army. That’s a significant part of what set this all off. Wagner soldiers will be conscripted into the Army. If they’re lucky, their formations will be transferred intact into the Army’s chain of command. If they’re not, they’ll be dispersed piecemeal into existing units. A few of them with connections will probably be able to scoot off to Africa to join a Wagner deployment there, but most of them are likely destined for “meat assaults”.
I agree, but you’re probably giving the Russian army too much credit in calling them a regular force.
The convicts are mostly already gone from Wagner, either by being killed in action or more rarely by completing their six-month term; they had to curb recruitment from prisons around the beginning of this year, and the first of the ones to survive their 6-month term started being released into Russian society around March. Allegedly one of the reasons for the curb on prison recruitment was the paucity of volunteers who had caught on to their likelihood of actually surviving 6 months, since Wagner used them as literal cannon fodder to draw fire from Ukrainian troops and reveal their positions, positions which the professional Wagner mercenaries would then go about infiltrating.
Average Russians weren’t too happy about rapist and murderers who had just survived 6 months in combat waking freely among them. So what did the Russian government do? They made it a crime punishable by 15 years in jail for “discrediting” criminals released from Wagner:
So by criticizing criminals who had served in Wagner and been released onto the streets, you be committing a crime and sent to jail. For saying bad things about murderers and rapists. Because that’s a crime.