A Ukrainian policeman walks past a 24-story constructing partially destroyed after a Russian missile attack in Kiev, June 24, 2023.
Sergei Supinsky | afp | Getty Images
Based on analysts, Ukrainian forces may make the most of the Wagner Group’s short-lived armed insurgency, and the turmoil amongst Russian military leaders is prone to significantly weaken their war effort.
A weekend of chaos left observers of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine questioning what might occur next. The extraordinary 24-hour period posed what many consider the best challenge to the facility of Russian President Vladimir Putin during his greater than 20 years in power.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the infamous head of Wagner’s private militia group, launched a mock rebellion over the weekend by sending an armored convoy towards the Russian capital.
Nevertheless, the insurgency was abruptly called off late Saturday, under a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Prigozhin agreed to de-escalate the situation and ordered his fighters advancing on Moscow to return to their bases.
John Barranco, 2021-2022 senior member of the U.S. Marine Corps on the Scowcroft Atlantic Council’s Center for Strategy and Security, he said Wagner’s rebellion couldn’t have come at a greater time for Ukraine.
“Whatever Prigozhin’s true motives are, or the consequence of his mutiny and subsequent apparent change of direction, several things remain clear: an enormous commotion has been sown in Russia’s rear, and the trust left by the rank-and-file Russian soldiers of their leadership has vanished,” he said in blog post.
A spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
War without Wagner
Barranco said that when a military loses confidence in its leadership, morale drops to the ground—and sometimes with it comes the need to fight.
Describing Wagner as essentially the most effective Russian unit in Ukraine, Barranco said the mercenary group will almost actually be disbanded and it shouldn’t be yet clear whether its fighters might be absorbed into the Russian army.
Tony Brenton, the previous British ambassador to Russia, agreed that Wagner’s mercenary group was by far essentially the most effective element of the Russian military in Ukraine.
“The proven fact that apparently Prigozhin isn’t any more [the war] and possibly Wagner will back off as well, it’ll undermine Russia’s performance on the battlefield,” Brenton told CNBC.Street Signs Europe” on Monday.
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Ultimately, Barranco said the recent turn of events would likely provide Ukraine’s military command with something of a chance after greater than 16 months of fighting. He said the most effective probability for a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive could be to push Russian forces from their 600 miles of layered combat positions within the country.
“It’s unlikely that even essentially the most audacious Ukrainian army commander ever foresaw an attack on the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, where the Russian-Ukrainian war is raging, but that’s precisely the explanation for the Wagner Group’s sudden mutiny. did,” said Barranco.
What happened over the weekend?
A former ally of Russia’s longtime president and a person often called “Putin’s cook,” Prigozhin said in a Telegram on Saturday that he was able to go “all-out” against the Russian military and rejected Putin’s underlying rationale for invading Ukraine in February 2022.
In return, Putin promised to quell what he described as an armed rebellion, accusing Prigozhin of “treason” in a televised speech.
Members of the Wagner group sit on top of a tank on a street in Rostov-on-Don, June 24, 2023.
Stringer | AFP | Getty Images
Wagner’s mutiny was believed to have taken place only 200 kilometers (120 mi) from Moscow before Prigozhin made the abrupt decision to abort the mission.
The rebel leader was unceremoniously exiled to Belarus in exchange for calling off the rebellion.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Sunday that things were “moving in the suitable direction” after he discussed developments in Russia and Ukraine with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
“We agree that the Russian authorities are weak and that the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine is the most effective selection for the Kremlin,” Reznikov wrote on Twitter.
Nevertheless, the Institute for War Studies he said that the power of Russian forces to conduct each offensive and defensive operations in Ukraine was not “significantly affected” by the weekend insurgency of the Wagner Group.
The top of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, left the headquarters of the Southern Military District on June 24, 2023 in Rostov-on-Don, Russia.
Stringer | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
The American think tank is reportedly citing sources from each side, with Russian forces carrying out a comparatively large variety of ground attacks near the devastated city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine in recent days. . CNBC was unable to independently confirm the reports.
Nuclear safety concerns
Asked if the most recent incident could raise concerns in regards to the safety of Moscow’s nuclear arsenal, Brenton said the probability of nuclear weapons being deployed in Ukraine was “almost nil.”
“Don’t fret, I believe the likelihood of that continues to be very low,” Brenton said. “I do not see the extent of political instability in Russia as anything just like the level of an actual civil war [or] an actual burst of order that you just start worrying about nuclear weapons falling into the improper hands.”
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Nevertheless, Brenton noted that Putin had previously said he may be tempted to resort to nuclear weapons, and that prospect could come to the fore if a full-scale Russian invasion goes within the improper existential direction.
“It is not bad existentially yet. If that’s the case, I believe there’s such a danger,” Brenton said. “Let’s hope we do not find yourself like this.”