Interview: Russia's Wagner 'Decapitated' Since Mutiny, But 'That's Not The Same As Being Disbanded Altogether'

Keir Giles is an expert on Russian military transformation, a senior consulting fellow on Russia and Eurasia at the London-based Chatham House, and the author of works including Russia's War On Everybody: And What It Means For You.

He spoke with RFE/RL's Balkan Service about the consequences of the death last week of Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. He also talked about early calls for revenge going quiet, the potential for "disruption" at the Belarusian-EU border by Wagner remnants, and the perception that suspicious deaths are simply "how everybody now thinks Russia does business."

RFE/RL: How do you see the backdrop of a plane crash in which Prigozhin died? Many estimated that following the failed mutiny two months ago that sooner or later, a similar scenario would happen because many suggest that Vladimir Putin doesn't forgive any betrayal. At the same time, the Kremlin adamantly rejected any involvement in this crash, so there are a lot of uncertainties, and it is unclear what is behind it, but many suggest that Putin himself and the Kremlin are.

Keir Giles: OK, well there are at least three different questions there. First of all, the Kremlin denials. Well, there is no reason for anybody to pay any attention to what official Russia says about this crash, because the problem in this is the problem they have created for themselves: that they so rarely tell the truth about anything that they are simply not a reliable source of information, and nobody would expect that if this was in fact organized by the Russian authorities that they would come out and say so. So that is not a useful datapoint at all. Neither, in fact, is the DNA analysis that has supposedly indicated that Prigozhin is in fact dead. There is no aspect in this investigation that would be transparent and reliable.

Keir Giles

When we say, "the Kremlin was responsible for it," that may be a little misleading, because the Kremlin was not the only organization of state power within Russia that had a severe grudge with Prigozhin. He had offended far more people than just those sitting in the Kremlin. His main argument during the mutiny two months ago was actually with the Ministry of Defense. He is also extremely unpopular with the [Federal] Security Service, with the FSB. So there was no shortage of people in Russia that both wanted Prigozhin dead and had the means and the opportunity to bring that about.

So having him dead now corrects an anomaly for as long as he survived and remained unmurdered, this set a dangerous precedent within Russia because it showed that you could stand up to Moscow, you could confront Russian state authority, and not only survive but apparently be pardoned. For whatever reason, Prigozhin and his closest aides and lieutenants within the Wagner organization seemed to have been under the impression that they were now safe. And if so, that was a terrible miscalculation.

RFE/RL: So you are not buying into these conspiracy theories that actually Prigozhin is alive somewhere with a different identity, but you think that he is dead and that, broadly speaking, the Kremlin is behind it.

Giles: I think he's almost certainly dead. But because of this tradition of obfuscation, denial, and lies from the Kremlin, the conspiracy theories will never stop swirling about this.

RFE/RL: Now, speaking about the consequences: First is the question of whether the Wagner group would be decapitated, I mean its role. It started to [see a] decrease in influence since the failed mutiny, though some of the Wagner troops were moved to Belarus.

Giles: It's true that Wagner has been decapitated and that it is a less influential organization since the mutiny in June. But that's not the same as Wagner being disbanded altogether. Both of the efforts that the Russian state has made to try and neutralize the threat from Wagner, the threat from this well-organized, well-trained, and armed body of men that are extremely upset with Russian state power now have failed. Because the efforts to integrate them into Russia's regular armed forces did not succeed, and neither, it seemed, did the effort to pack them off to neighboring Belarus to get rid of the problem.

So, it remains to be seen how exactly Russia is going to be dealing with the intermediate commanders that are not as senior as those that were on the aircraft but still in positions of power within the Wagner organization, and the rank and file, the soldiers within Wagner. What exactly is Russia going to do to make sure that they do not pose a threat, in turn, to domestic security and stability in Russia?

RFE/RL: Some members of Wagner swear that they will retaliate in combination with a similar call from ultranationalists in Russia. Is this just an empty call or could they try to somehow avenge Prigozhin's death?

Giles: We did hear some calls for revenge early on; that seems to have gone a little bit quiet. Whether that's because of the countermeasures that have been taken by the Russian state or other events that have happened, we really can't tell. But, yes, what exactly Russia does to head off and neutralize and mitigate any such calls for retaliation is going to determine how this Wagner situation plays out over the next few weeks.

RFE/RL: At the same time, the prime minster of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, believes that after the death of Prigozhin in the plane crash, the danger arising from Wagner mercenaries deployed in Belarus remains in place. What is your position on that?

Giles: Well, that's absolutely correct. For as long as there is this armed group, which is technically, they would like to pretend, not beholden to the Russian or Belarusian state but actually takes orders from them, they are in a position to cause significant disruption. Now some people have characterized this as some sort of armed incursion into Poland. That seems possibly the least likely course of events. But as we have seen over the course of the last few years on that boundary between Belarus and Russia and its NATO and EU neighbors, there are so many other ways in which disruption can be caused.

RFE/RL: Who can replace Prigozhin? Apart from him, the military commander of Wagner, Dmitry Utkin, is also dead, and some other high-profile officials of the Wagner Group.

Giles: Whoever steps up to replace Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, the notional commander of the actual outfit group, will unlikely be as colorful and as dramatic of a figure as Prigozhin was. But who it is will depend on how exactly Russia decides to treat the problem of the Wagner remnant groups: whether someone will be installed to take command of the organization or whether it will be someone who steps up from its own intermediate commanders. That, too, will be an indication over the next few weeks of how exactly Russia is going to deal with this problem.

RFE/RL: You suggested that there are difficulties to incorporate the Wagner Group into the regular Russian Army. So overall, what would be the destiny of the group? Some of them are already deployed in Africa, some of them are in Belarus. Will Wagner simply fall into oblivion in the foreseeable future?

Giles: Part of the problem in assessing just how much of a problem this is for Russia is that we simply cannot see where those remaining Wagner individuals are. We do see that the numbers that arrived in Belarus were smaller than expected, and some of them have returned. We do see that there are small contingents scattered across Africa. But the rump, the remainder that is within Russia, seems for the time being to be more or less invisible.

RFE/RL: To what extent does the withdrawal of the Wagner forces from the Ukrainian battlefield following their failed mutiny in June further reduce the effectiveness of the operations of the regular Russian troops in Ukraine?

Giles: First of all, it's important to note that Wagner was withdrawn from the front line before the mutiny, not after it. They didn't pull out of the front line to do this. However, since then, of course, they have not returned, which means that a significant element of Russia's combat capacity of its ground forces has not actually been available to resist the Ukrainian counteroffensive. It may be that Russia in the future can reintegrate this pool of manpower into its armed forces, in which they represent some of the best-trained and most experienced of its infantry. But, of course, that remains in the future. And for the time being, we are still facing this open question of how exactly Russia is going to deal with these people.

RFE/RL: Meanwhile, Russia tries to fill this gap with other paramilitary groups. Could they be as successful as Wagner was?

Giles: We should remember that Wagner was an outlier; Wagner was an anomaly even within the constellation of the Russian private paramilitary companies. This was not an organization that arrived ancillary to a major corporation's activities or those of an oligarch; it's not a private army in that sense. Instead, it was an organization which existed for its own purposes and which actually had its own business aims and was used as means of projecting power in acquiring influence and economic leverage independent of any parent organization. So that means there is no direct equivalent among the other private military companies that could step in and replicate that role without significant transformation.

RFE/RL: Overall, Prigozhin is the last on the long list of Putin's opponents who were silenced, let's say. Does it suggest that any resistance to the Putin regime is still in vain, or does the Prigozhin mutiny, though unsuccessful, reveal cracks within the Kremlin and proves that Putin is no longer strong as many have believed?

Giles: I think it's far too optimistic to say that Prigozhin is the last on the list of Putin's opponents who will [allegedly] be murdered. Vladimir Putin has restored his position and his reputation as being a strong and ruthless leader against whom you should not stand. And anybody who was considering the example of Prigozhin and thinking they, too, might be willing to challenge Russian power because apparently you might survive it, will now be reassessing their risk calculations. So in that respect, Vladimir Putin has shut down a problem and tied off a loose end. And for the time being, it means that, domestically at least, his position is more secure.

RFE/RL: What do you think in the foreseeable future, what danger lurks that is biggest for Putin, because the fact that Prigozhin tried to somehow challenge his power reveals certain cracks within his very powerful power structure.

Giles: Again, we have to remember that Wagner was an anomaly, that Wagner was an outlier -- not just in the way that it was structured but also because this was an organization and a center of power that was outside the stable system of power with Russia; it was an external disrupter, and as such it was always going to pose a challenge to the stability of the established order. Since there is no other organization which fills that same role, and everything else is beholden to the system of power that it needs now to keep stable, there won't be a similar challenger emerging. And you might assume that President Putin has learned his lesson and won't create a similar one in the future.

RFE/RL: Do you think that, at the same time, Putin has sent a message to any potential opponent within the circle of the Kremlin not to dare to challenge his power or maybe some of his potential opponents who are dissatisfied with the way the war in Ukraine is progressed to see the chance in the future to try to stand up to Putin in different ways.

Giles: The theatrical manner of disposing of Prigozhin and the way in which this ruthlessly also [allegedly] murders innocent people sends a very deliberate message to those who might be thinking of standing against the Kremlin. Of course, one of the most striking and remarkable things about this is the way it has been accepted as normal and natural within Russia. It's been passed with a shrug of the shoulders and barely batting an eyelid, because this, it seems, is how everybody now thinks Russia does business. And that's an indication of just how far Russia has fallen from being a normal, civilized country now to a place where mass murder is a means of dealing with people who stand up to the regime instead of putting them on trial.

RFE/RL: And so, all in all, you think that Putin's power is unrivaled and that probably next year he will go to the elections, so his power is unrivaled for the foreseeable future?

Giles: Prigozhin did not directly challenge Putin. Prigozhin had an argument with the Ministry of Defense, and it was only indirectly that in doing so he stood up against Russian state power and had to be crushed as a result. No challenger directly to Putin is likely going to emerge in the near future.

RFE/RL: How will this situation influence the war in Ukraine?

Giles: It won't.

RFE/RL: Do you think Putin will continue more fervently to wage the war, or maybe reconsider the way these operations will be conducted in the future?

Giles: There is no reason to think that the Wagner episode will have any influence on how Putin is conducting the war in Ukraine.