Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter posted a lengthy report yesterday on PMC Wagner and the June 23-34 revolt, providing a wealth of heretofore unreported details about those events, and how Wagner troops went from being national heroes to the path of self-destruction. He nails Wagner commander Yevgeny Prigozhin for trading in his loyalty to the state for greed and personal ambition. It all hinges around the two $1 billion contracts that Wagner had with the Defense Ministry, one for fighting in the Donbass, and the other for providing food services to the Russian military. When those contracts expired on May 1—the fighting contract was temporarily extended until the fighting in Bakhmut was over—Prigozhin’s gravy train came to an end. At the point that it became clear that the contracts would not be renewed, he flew into a rage against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, accusing them of corruption and of cheating Wagner of ammunition supplies.
“The impact of Prigozhin losing nearly $2 billion in contacts, combined with an increasing level of paranoia on his part that he was caught up in a life-or-death struggle with Shoigu and Gerasimov, led the Wagner owner to double down on his vitriolic attacks on Russia’s military leadership, and thereby create the impression that he and Wagner alone could guarantee military victory for Russia over Ukraine,” Ritter writes. He adds a paragraph later saying that “Prigozhin’s opposition to Shoigu and Gerasimov, and his plotting to supplant them, did not escape the attention of either the Russian government, or Russia’s enemies in Ukraine, the U.S., and Great Britain.”
MI6, in particular, “used its connectivity with the Ukrainian intelligence services, in coordination with MI6-controlled Russian oligarchs operating out of London, to reinforce Prigozhin’s belief that he had the support of the Russian military, politicians, and business elite, all of whom Prigozhin was led to believe would rally to his side once Wagner began marching on Moscow.” That, of course, spectacularly turned out not to be the case.