“There’s a lot of talk right now about what the Wagner Group will do. We can tell you one thing. We are getting started, get ready for us,” the soldiers said in a translated video. It is unclear who they were directing their message to.
Yea that seems like a great way to really have all the Wagner soldiers turn on Russia. They only stopped last time because the boss said to, if he’s gone there’s no one to stop them
I wouldn't bet on that. The business side of Wagner should be intact. It's not like Prigz was hand writing checks to his tens of thousands of employees scattered all over Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and at least 6 more countries on the African Continent.
Wagner PMC is a business, a big one, and that means administrative staff running the day to day of recruiting, hiring, payroll, purchasing, and logistics. Those people weren't on that plane, or at least not enough of them to make any real difference.
Wagner has just lost their head, I wonder if anyone inside the company is still able to take over, or if the Russian army will just assimilate or disappear them.
The Russian Military won't be able to "disappear" or assimilate Wagner. The situation on the African Continent entirely prevents it; Wagner needs to be there or a shit ton of $$$ will be lost and Russia cannot use regular / uniformed Russian soldiers for those...activities.
It's easy to forget because of Prigozhin's long association with Putin and the War in Ukraine but Wagner has a power base along with income streams that are entirely separate from Russia. They are truly a trans-national Mercenary group.
"The West" may take this opportunity to delete them but that probably wouldn't happen until after the reaction from Prigozhin's death has settled down. Wouldn't want to keep them from Marching on Moscow again after all.
I thought there would be an obvious head of the hydra, but since the other head of the PMC was also on that plane, Wagner is shook, unless, in some alternate reality where Wagner is more competent than other Russian organizations, they have procedures for this scenario.
Personally, if I was in charge of "my group" getting paid to do something in a part of the world away from Russia, I'd just remain under contract. Mercenaries hold no allegiance, other than the contract. maybe I'd reform an administrative structure with the other chunks of Wagner, but I certainly don't have the incentive to go back to Moscow.
One of my favorite Ukrainian journalists mentioned that she'd heard Prigozhin had instructions to march on the Kremlin in case of his untimely death. She emphasized that it was more of a rumor than anything else, but interesting if true.
A determined Wagner could topple Moscow, they aren’t entirely untrained meat grinder recruits like the Russian army. They’re trained, experienced, and moderately well equipped. Plus Russia is not capable of maintaining ground in Ukraine, keep Wagner out of the central oblasts, and keeping its chains on the chechyns, the kazaks, and the Belarusians, all at once. We’d see a second collapse of Russian command over the region and Russia would be reborn even smaller again.
“In the area of the camp of Private Military Company ‘Wagner,’ in the village of Tsel and in the Osipovichi district, there are currently severe disruptions in the mobile Internet.”