Wagner rebels career toward showdown with Putin as they push to Moscow

Mercenaries from the Wagner Group of embittered warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin — some of them speeding along a highway to Moscow — on Saturday looked set for imminent clashes with troops loyal to President Vladimir Putin, who warned the rebellion risked pushing Russia into a civil war.

Furious over the Kremlin’s bungled invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin seized key strategic footholds in southern Russian on Saturday — most significantly the major city of Rostov-on-Don — while an unclear number of his forces were making a dash up the main highway to the capital. Russian government forces also appeared to shell the southern city of Voronezh on Saturday in an attempt to combat the Wagner insurrection, which is snowballing into one of the gravest threats to Putin’s 25-year rule.

It is far from clear how close Wagner’s troops are to Moscow but the governor of Lipetsk, some 400 kilometers south of the capital, has reported the mercenary convoy passing through, and authorities there said they were carving ditches in the road with diggers to slow Prigozhin’s men. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin warned “a counter-terrorist operation has been declared in Moscow. The situation is complicated,” and added that Monday would not be a regular working day, telling people to avoid traveling round the city.

Footage posted online of the roadblocks supposed to slow Wagner looked hastily improvized, with a light military presence, mainly composed of civilian vehicles. Jay Truesdale, a former American diplomat who served in both Russia and Ukraine, said Moscow was ill-equipped to cope with a major insurgency. “Russia hasn’t been able to deal with the immediate threat from Wagner because the best members of its armed forces are deployed, or suffered casualties in Ukraine,” he told POLITICO.

In a sign that fears of full-blown internal conflict are not far-fetched, Chechen strongman and Putin loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov vowed to throw his fighters behind the president and take on Prigozhin’s renegade troops in Rostov. “The rebellion must be crushed, and if this requires harsh measures, then we are ready!” he said.

Images of shelling in Voronezh, some 500 kilometers south of Moscow, could not immediately be verified, but the governor, Alexander Gusev, confirmed fighting there. “The Russian armed forces are carrying out required operational and combat measures on the territory of the Voronezh Region as part of a counter-terror operation,” he said.

Early on Saturday, Prigozhin claimed to have taken control of Rostov — a crucial command center for the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, with a population of more than 1 million — without a fight. In response, Putin lashed out at Prigozhin’s “treason” and vowed to “neutralize” the threat posed by his renegade mercenary army.

In a five-and-a-half-minute address to the nation, the president denounced this mutiny as “a stab in the back of our nation and our people.” Without naming Prigozhin, he said: “We are dealing with treason.”

The Russian president said the insurrection was “exactly the kind of blow that was dealt to Russia in 1917, when the country fought the First World War, but victory was stolen from her. Intrigues, squabbles, politicking behind the backs of the army and the people turned into the greatest shock: the destruction of the army and the collapse of the state, the loss of vast territories. In the end — the tragedy of the civil war.”

The insurrection dramatically escalates the stakes in Moscow’s 16-month-old war on Ukraine, and creates a significant headache for Putin, just as Ukrainian forces are looking for opportunities to push through Russian defensive lines in a long-awaited counteroffensive.

Most significant challenge

Britain’s ministry of defense also cast Prigozhin’s mutiny “as the most significant challenge to the Russian state in recent times.”

In a new audio message released by Prigozhin on Saturday, he insisted his men had Russia’s best interests at heart. “When it comes to accusations of betrayal, the president is deeply mistaken. We are patriots … None of us will turn ourselves in because we don’t want to live a life of corruption, deceit and bureaucracy,” he said. “We are patriots and those who oppose us today are on the side of the scum.”

In a statement on Saturday morning, the U.K. government indicated Prigozhin’s forces were moving through territory around Voronezh, roughly 500 kilometers south of Moscow and around 500 kilometers north of Rostov “almost certainly aiming to get to Moscow.” Russian authorities said they had closed the main highway running from Moscow to the south in a bid to block any advances by Prigozhin’s mutineers.

In both Voronezh and Rostov, the authorities have called on people to stay at home, while Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, called on Russians to pray for Putin. 

“With very limited evidence of fighting between Wagner and Russian security forces, some have likely remained passive, acquiescing to Wagner,” the statement by the U.K. defense ministry said. “Over the coming hours, the loyalty of Russia’s security forces, and especially the Russian National Guard, will be key to how the crisis plays out.”

Admitting the situation remains “difficult” in Rostov, a palpably angry Putin called on Wagner’s forces to desert their commander. “I call on those who are being dragged into this crime not to make the fatal and tragic, inimitable mistake, to make the only right choice — to stop participating in criminal actions,” he said.

Putin’s chef

Nicknamed “Putin’s chef” — because he came to prominence by running catering services for the Russian government — Prigozhin has become one of the most prominent faces of Russia’s war against Ukraine, but has become an increasingly virulent critic of Moscow’s military command, which he repeatedly accuses of incompetence and of providing insufficient resources to his frontline troops. A notoriously brutal and unpredictable figure, Prigozhin has drawn many of his forces from jails.

Overnight, Prigozhin said in a series of short voice messages posted to social media that he was leading a “march of justice” and not a military coup, and suggested that 25,000 of his men were en route to Moscow to oust Russia’s military leadership — and were ready to die for the cause.

“We are at the staff headquarters, it’s 7:30 in the morning,” Prigozhin said in a video statement posted in his Telegram channel. “Military objects in Rostov are under control, including the aerodrome.”

According to reports and social media, Wagner forces met little resistance as they traveled the short distance from the Ukrainian border to the city, the operational center for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The thrust transformed Prigozhin’s increasingly furious tirades of the past 24 hours against the Kremlin into stark action that exposed the vulnerability of the Russian rear.

“The chief of staff ran away as soon as he found out that we were approaching the building,” said Prigozhin, referring to Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, who was reported to have been in the area recently.

Prigozhin said the staff headquarters in Rostov was working normally. “Everything we did and took control over was so that offensive aviation does not strike us, but strikes the Ukrainians,” he said. The 1:43-minute video statement was shot in the corner of a rain-soaked courtyard as armed troops milled around in the background.

The big question now is how much support Prigozhin could possibly command. Wagner’s recruitment posters were already being taken down in several cities. Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, tweeted Prigozhin was unlikely to win support among Russia’s key power players.

“The indifference of the man of the masses on which Putin’s regime rests will not turn against him. But an indifferent person will not defend him either. Much depends on the loyalty of the siloviki and the elites in general. But they don’t like Prigozhin, he’s dangerous to them.”

Prigozhin takes control

Meanwhile, an unverified video purported to show Prigozhin taking control of military installations in Rostov, where he held tense talks with Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov. The Wagner chief appeared to threaten to blockade the city and march on Moscow if his demands were not met.

According to military bloggers and to Prigozhin himself, Wagner troops had overnight shot down one Russian Mi-35 helicopter. Videos posted on social media overnight had shown choppers hovering over Rostov.

Prominent Russian pro-war blogger Igor Girkin also posted clips showing long columns of military vehicles, which he said belonged to Wagner forces, snaking through the Voronezh region.

Appealing directly to the Russian army and people, Prigozhin said the Kremlin had lied to them over the toll of the war. A huge amount of territory has been lost, he said. Three to four times as many men were being killed than was reported to the top; and losses — killed, missing, wounded and unable to fight due to a lack of ammunition or leadership — reached 1,000 on some days, he said.

Russia’s FSB spy service has opened a criminal investigation for organizing an armed insurrection, and according to state media, counterterrorism operations have been launched in Moscow, the surrounding region and Voronezh oblast, which lies around halfway along the 1,100-kilometer road from Rostov to the Russian capital.

This story is developing.