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“No one currently knows what is really going on in the Kremlin”

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, February 19, 2022. (Illustration image) © via REUTERS - SPUTNIK

Text by: Romain Lemaresquier Follow

8 mins

According to various sources, Yevgeny Prigojine, the founder of the Wagner group, is becoming a threat to Vladimir Putin.

Interview with Lukas Aubin, research director at Iris (Institute of international and strategic relations), specialist in the geopolitics of Russia.

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Some sources, including the American think tank The Institute for the Study of War, claim that the founder of the Wagner group is in the process of setting up a military structure parallel to the Russian armed forces.

A structure that could pose a threat to the regime of Vladimir Putin.

At the same time, Yevgeny Prigojine is increasingly critical of the Russian army in interviews published on Russian websites and on Telegram channels affiliated with the Wagner group.

Lukas Aubin, author of the

 (La Découverte editions), believes that it is still too early to know. 

RFI: Is Evguéni Prigojine, who has considerable power, a threat to Vladimir Putin's regime today?

Lukas Aubin:

You should know that Evguéni Prigojine has been active for several years now.

We have known since 2019 that he has been evolving in particular via his Wagner militia – his private militia – in Africa in particular, but not only, he has also been present on the ground in Ukraine since the start of the invasion.

It turns out that up to now he was a “hand man” of Vladimir Putin, who used him according to the strategy of plausible deniability, namely that one says that one does not know.

Vladimir Putin therefore had a militia which enabled him to influence various territories on a planetary scale.

It turns out that a few weeks ago,

, officially declaring that he was the head of this private militia.

Until now, it was an open secret, but now the nature of his posture has changed.

Today, it is no longer possible for Vladimir Putin to carry out this famous strategy of plausible deniability. 

In

, private militias are prohibited.

In fact, Yevgeny Prigojine therefore exists against Russian law.

However, it should be noted that Vladimir Putin's system is a vertical system.

All the militias, whether private or public, all the military and paramilitary forces that exist are tolerated by the authorities, if not encouraged.

Wagner was strongly encouraged, because it allowed Vladimir Poutine to extend its influence in Mali, in Central Africa or to have reinforcement in the east of Ukraine, whereas the army in difficulty.

The problem now is to know if Wagner would not be becoming stronger than Vladimir Putin hoped for, if the latter does not lose his hand on Yevgeny Prigojine. 

Obviously, the problem is very complex since today, nobody is in the mysteries of the Kremlin.

No one knows exactly what is being said.

All we know is that Vladimir Putin is gathering his forces to the maximum and that he has called on Evgueni Prigojine to bring back his troops from the Central African Republic, from Mali, in order to be able to have a larger strike force in Ukraine.

The same applies in particular to Ramzan Kadyrov's militia in Chechnya.

Because Wagner is not the only military entity parallel to the classical armed forces in Russia.

And for the moment, we have seen Yevgeny Prigojine and

raise your voice against the special military operation.

Nevertheless, these positions were never intended to criticize Vladimir Putin head-on, but the intermediary bodies, namely the generals who, from a strategic, military point of view, would not be up to standard.

We can also perceive these positions as a way of forming a buffer zone between Vladimir Putin and the army which is in difficulty on the ground. 

The risk is that the soldiers flee or rebel.

These positions can also be interpreted as a way of reassuring the Russian population, by showing that the authorities are aware of the army's difficulties on the ground and that positions are being taken to resolve this problem.

But Yevgeny Prigogine no longer hesitates to criticize the way

the Kremlin

manages “

” .

The researcher that I am cannot answer you on the rumor that you have just described.

Yes, maybe Vladimir Putin is in trouble internally, but at the moment there is no reliable source to know exactly.

All I can tell you about the statements that have been made publicly so far is that so far no one has dared to speak out against Vladimir Putin.

Directly anyway.

No one officially has voluntarily weakened the Kremlin publicly.

Perhaps in a few weeks or a few months, we will have more information on the subject and we will see that indeed, things were moving a lot internally and that Vladimir Putin was in great difficulty.

But at the moment I don't have the

The Russian army suffers defeats on the various fronts and one has the impression that finally, it is the Wagner group which allows Moscow to more or less hold its positions.

Is the Wagner group today the only one able to resist Ukrainian counter-offensives?

No, the Wagner group cannot, alone, resist the Ukrainian assaults.

On the other hand, the Wagner group, with the help of the Chechen forces of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Russian army and recent conscripts – 300,000 men were called up for this partial mobilization, but some reports mention the figure of 500,000 men – could allow the Russian army to regain the upper hand. 

It should nevertheless be emphasized that Vladimir Putin's difficulty arises not only in terms of the man on the ground, but also in terms of armaments and the difficulties in obtaining significant, modern and regular supplies of weapons.

The fact that for several weeks Vladimir Putin has been using drones bought from Iran on a massive scale shows how difficult it is to find allies from a military point of view.

If you as an authority are reduced to asking for help from Iran and North Korea, you are indeed relatively isolated.

In your opinion, does Evguéni Prigojine have particular ambitions, particularly in Ukraine?

Is he on an even harder line than Vladimir Putin?

If we rely for example on the film he has been able to finance in recent years in which he staged the great war narratives of contemporary Russia, we can indeed imagine that he would be on a harder line than Vladimir Putin if ever he should have more power.

However, we must always keep in mind that if until now, we imagined Yevgeny Prigojine more to the right than Vladimir Putin, the latter's decision-making since February 24 reveals a form of extreme right-winging. 

Today, we are debating whether or not Vladimir Putin will go further on the ground than the four regions he has already annexed.

This in itself is already a huge piece of data, in the sense that we are on something that was hard to imagine just a few months ago.

In this sense, Vladimir Putin has already yielded to the sirens of the extreme right in Russia.

Of course, one can always imagine someone more to the right than him coming to power.

Often, when we imagine the fall of Vladimir Putin, we imagine behind it an appeasement.

But it must be said that the situation could worsen if a soldier like Evguéni Prigojine or Ramzan Kadyrov took his place.

What do you mean by "taking his place"?

A coup ?

No, it's way too early to tell.

At the moment, we are in a very hot period with a lot of contradictory information coming and going.

Very clever who knows what is really going on in the Kremlin, what are the intrigues.

On the other hand, we can quite say that Vladimir Putin is weakened because his special military operation is not going as he wished.

We know that he wanted a lightning operation, that he wanted kyiv to be taken in a few days and for there to be an alternation at the top of the Ukrainian regime.

Nevertheless, we cannot go further into the analysis at present since, I repeat, no one currently knows what is really going on within the Kremlin. 

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