New Reporting Sheds Light on Why the Wagner Mutiny Was Launched — And Why It Failed
A new report on the Wagner Group mutiny revealed stunning new insights into how Yevgeny Prigozhin’s revolt against Russia’s military leaders failed after Vladimir Putin got wind of the plot.
The Wall Street Journal’s Bojan Pancevski reported Wednesday that Prigozhin’s plan was to capture Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov as they visited a region in the south of Russia that borders Ukraine. Prighozhin reportedly believed that Russia’s armed forces would join the Wagner mutiny.
According to the report, however, Prigozhin’s plot was foiled when Russia’s Federal Security Service learned about it days in advance, forcing him to act on an alternative plan.
From WSJ:
Made aware of the leak, Prigozhin was then forced to act sooner than planned on Friday and managed to capture the southern Russian city of Rostov, a key command point for the invasion of Ukraine. The ease with which Wagner’s troops took the city of one million that is home to a large military airport suggests that some regular forces commanders could have been part of the plot, according to Western intelligence.
Western officials said they believe Prigozhin had communicated his intentions to senior military officers, possibly including Gen. Sergei Surovikin, commander of the Russian aerospace force. It couldn’t be determined whether Surovikin passed this information on to the FSB, or how the agency found out about Prigozhin’s plans.
Surovikin was the first senior commander to condemn the plot on Friday and urge Prigozhin to stop his men. Forces under Surovikin’s command carried out airstrikes on the Wagner column, the only such attack by regular troops against the insurrectionists.
Pancevski was corroborated by the New York Times’s reporting that Surovikin knew of Prigozhin’s plot in advance.
“Western officials said they believe the original plot had a good chance of success but failed after the conspiracy was leaked, forcing Prigozhin to improvise an alternative plan,” Pancevski reported. He also cited a Western intelligence analysis that “the plot would likely have ended in an armed standoff in Moscow if Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko hadn’t offered to mediate” the deal in which the rebellion was called off and Prigozhin was sent into exile:
Lukashenko suggested hosting Wagner in his country, partly to bolster his own security against possible encroachment by Russia, according to Western intelligence. Putin has long sought to absorb Belarus into the Russian Federation.
The permanent stationing of Wagner troops agreed as part of the deal to defuse the crisis is meant to serve as Lukashenko’s personal security guarantee, Western intelligence said they believe.
Watch a CNN segment on the new reporting above.
