The Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary organization, is discussed by Scott Ritter and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Scott Ritter is an author, former UN weapons inspector, and former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer.
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| Hey, everybody. | |
| Welcome to the show. | |
| I wanted to do this quick show with Scott Ritter on the breaking news about the Wagner Group in Russia to help our listeners understand exactly what's going on. | |
| Of course, you all know Scott Ritter. | |
| Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer. | |
| He is the author of Disarmament in the Times of Perestroika, Arms Control, and And the end of the Soviet Union. | |
| He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty. | |
| He served on General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War from 1991 to 1998. | |
| He served as the chief weapons inspector With the United Nations and Iraq, Mr. | |
| Ritters currently writes on issues pertaining to international security, military affairs, Russia and the Mideast, as well as arms control and nonproliferation. | |
| He's been an extraordinary source of courageous truth throughout his career. | |
| And I'm very happy to have you back on the show, Scott. | |
| Well, thank you very much for having me. | |
| So let's start with a little history. | |
| The Wagner Group was actually, it was started by Russia as a private contractor in order to be able to give military assistance to African nations, etc., in compliance with the Russian Constitution, in compliance with the Russian Constitution, which prohibits Russian soldiers from serving anywhere else in the world. | |
| Without the approval of the Russian Federation. | |
| I mean, I wish we had this kind of a law, but will you explain that? | |
| Sure. | |
| The Wagner Group came into being in 2014 as a private military contractor. | |
| It was the brainchild of a fusion between Russian military intelligence, the GRU, and some retired veterans who saw an opportunity to use their skill set in a manner that wasn't linked to the bureaucracy of the Ministry of Defense. | |
| In 2014, you know, there was the Maidan revolution in Kiev that led to a conflict between the Ukrainian government and ethnic Russians in the Donbass. | |
| The Russian government wanted to throw its weight behind the ethnic Russians, but was prohibited from sending active duty military forces to Donbass by the constitution. | |
| Wagner became a vehicle through which the Russian government could provide military experts who could train, who could equip, who could operate technical equipment on behalf of the Russian separatists. | |
| They served there from 2014 up until 2022 in that capacity. | |
| In February of 2022, Vladimir Putin initiated the special military operation, the invasion of Ukraine, and Wagner's role expanded. | |
| They became a combatant unit. | |
| They grew in size. | |
| Some people say between 30,000 and 50,000 Wagner contractors served under the umbrella of the Wagner Group. | |
| They were given some of the most difficult military assignments. | |
| I mean, say what you want about Wagner, I think the United States government has classified them as a criminal organization for what they do in Africa, etc. | |
| But in the Donbass, let's be clear, they are some of the most professional and effective military combatants out there. | |
| They've achieved tremendous success in very difficult circumstances in urban fighting against the Ukrainian forces. | |
| And they developed a well-deserved reputation within Russia of being sort of these heroic patriots, which is all fine and dandy, except there's a problem, the legal status of Wagner. | |
| See, Wagner could serve as a private military contractor so long as the territory they fought on was not considered to be Russian. | |
| But after the referendum in September and October of last year, the territories that Wagner served on in Lugansk and Donetsk now became Russian territory. | |
| Just hold on a second there to explain that. | |
| There was a referendum in the Donbass in which Donbass voted 90 to 10 to join Russia. | |
| And Russia actually, at that point, changed its constitution. | |
| And this was after the invasion already started. | |
| And Russia initially had rejected Russia. | |
| incorporating the Donbass into Russia. | |
| But once the invasion started, and in the view of Russia, Ukraine was being intractable. | |
| At that point, they changed the constitution in Russia to make Donbass part of Russia. | |
| Right. | |
| Donbass and also the territories of Kherson and Zaporizhia, two other oblasts that serve as a land bridge between mainland Russia and Crimea. | |
| So now that this territory became legally part of Russia, from the Russian perspective, that's all we're talking about. | |
| Understand that Europe, the United States, and other nations don't You know, haven't recognized this, but Russia is a nation of laws, and from a Russian legal perspective, Wagner now had no legitimate status, because Russian law does not allow for private military contractors. | |
| There's nothing in Russian law that permits this, and the Wagner fighters, as heroic as they are, they now lack any legal status. | |
| The Wagner command element took pride in the fact that they weren't the Ministry of Defense. | |
| One of the reasons they were so effective is that they weren't encumbered by the bureaucracy that comes with regular military service. | |
| They had very experienced commanders who could take Rapid decisions translate that into tactical actions on the battlefield, and this is what gave them the advantage. | |
| But now, in order to stay able to fight, they had to transition to the Ministry of Defense, which means that the fighters and the organization would have to sign contracts And stop being a private military contractor. | |
| People like Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Commander's Council, the experienced leaders of Wagner, took umbrage at this. | |
| They said they don't want that. | |
| And it became sort of a, it turned into a war of insults, so to speak, where in order to justify not wanting to be part of the Ministry of Defense, Prigozhin started to insult the Minister of Defense and the chairman of the general staff, General Prigozhin started to insult the Minister of Defense and the chairman And this became a very vitriolic, internet-based campaign. | |
| Let me just interrupt for a second, just to make you backtrack, because you know so much about this. | |
| Prigozhin is the figurehead chief or director of Wagner. | |
| The true power of Wagner is in the hands of the four members of that command council. | |
| Those four who were very secretive originally, but now people know who they are. | |
| And they are four of the leading most decorated members of the Russian military from various campaigns. | |
| So they're high level, I guess general or colonel level, but they've received extensive military decorations for heroism, etc. | |
| And they were, as I said, they were super secretive at one point, but now people know who they are. | |
| Those are the real commanders of Wagner. | |
| Correct. | |
| And they themselves often have issues with the leadership of the Ministry of Defense. | |
| So one of the more notable members of this command council has just published a book, in fact, about his experiences in Syria, where he is scathing about the Ministry of Defense and about the bureaucracy and the incompetence and the corruption of the Russian military. | |
| So it's not as though these people don't agree with Purgosian, but I think it's important that people understand that Evgeny Purgosian is not a military man. | |
| He doesn't make any military decisions. | |
| He's involved in the management of Wagner, and he plays a very important role as serving as the public face of Wagner. | |
| But the decisions made about actual combat on the ground are made by the commander's council. | |
| And it's just as you described, these very experienced veteran soldiers decorated for heroism. | |
| Nobody can doubt that they know what they're talking about when it comes time to war. | |
| Now, they recognize that if they were compelled to sign these contracts, that the character of Wagner would be over, that Wagner would no longer exist as what they wanted it to be, etc. | |
| For whatever reason, they made a decision to take this to the next level, to go from simply rhetoric to actually carrying out what was an armed insurrection. | |
| Now, I will tell you as a former intelligence officer who has experience in these things, Purgosian exhibited all the red flags one would normally associate with somebody who is susceptible to being recruited. | |
| Instability, greed, financial problems, and his actions are so closely mirrored what the Ukrainian intelligence services and the Western intelligence service would want from somebody that I believe that eventually they're going to show that he was influenced by foreign powers to carry out a coup d'etat designed to collapse the government of Vladimir Putin. | |
| There is an oligarch operating out of London, Khodorovsky, a billionaire who finances information warfare, has connectivity in Moscow. | |
| And there's reason to believe that, well, he actually is saying that he was supportive of what Progrosian was doing, serendipitously, apparently. | |
| But the idea was that Progrosian would initiate an action and then people would rally around him. | |
| This would lead to The collapse of the Putin regime. | |
| What happened is... | |
| So, Prigozhin believes, apparently, I've seen the chatter on the internet that the CIA was behind this insurrection as a regime change. | |
| Who knows whether it's true or not? | |
| But anyway, Prigozhin was persuaded himself and apparently tried to persuade other people that if he launched this insurrection, that he would get support from the oligarchs in Russia and that he would get support from the Russian military that he would get support from the oligarchs in Russia and that he would get support from the Russian Correct. | |
| There would be a collapse of the they were they were careful not to say we're going after Putin. | |
| What they were going after was Shoigu and Gerasimov. | |
| But you can't preserp a presidential authority. | |
| I mean, sir, this would be as if when you become president, if somebody said we're going to march on Washington, D.C. because we want you to change the secretary of state and the secretary of defense. | |
| What they're really saying is your days are numbered. | |
| You're out of here. | |
| And that's what they were saying to Putin. | |
| Wagner began this. | |
| Wagner was split. | |
| First of all, not every Wagner fighter went. | |
| The vast majority of the Wagner fighters remained in their camps. | |
| Only about 4,000 or 5,000 of Wagner fighters went with Pergosian. | |
| Many of them were misled into what they were doing. | |
| They thought they were going to secure the border region from potential Ukrainian attack and were somewhat taken aback when suddenly they're surrounding Russian military facilities. | |
| But they began to move no support whatsoever. | |
| Every Russian leader rallied behind Putin. | |
| Every political figure rallied behind Putin. | |
| A handful of oligarchs, instead of rallying around Prigozhin, panicked and fled the country. | |
| But nobody supported Prigozhin. | |
| And it became clear We're good to go. | |
| And it's surrounded the city, and we're prepared to launch an assault on Wagner, which would have been fairly one-sided. | |
| I mean, as effective as Wagner is, understand that when you project power away from your base, you have limited ammunition, limited fuel, limited sustainability. | |
| Wagner would have been cut off and annihilated. | |
| I hate to interrupt, but explain to people how many Chechens there were And why the Chechens are so fanatically loyal to Putin. | |
| Chechnya is one of the states of the Russian Federation, which famously was in revolt against Russia during, I guess, during the 90s and a very, very bloody revolt. | |
| But explain why they are now, the military of Chechnya is now fanatically, zealously in love with Vladimir Putin. | |
| Sure. | |
| Well, as you mentioned, there were actually two Chechen wars. | |
| The first one began, I believe, in 1993, lasted a couple of years, and it ended with a Russian defeat, and the Chechen Republic actually became an independent republic. | |
| That didn't last very long. | |
| In 1999, the war resumed, and it continued until around 2005 with some residual insurgency, even continuing up until recent times. | |
| But Vladimir Putin was able to reach out to the Chechen rebels and convince them that they were being used by foreign intelligence services, that That this was a tragedy for them and for Russia, and a significant number of these former rebels switched over, including somebody named Ahmad Kadyrov. | |
| He was the first president of the new Dutch Republic within the Russian Federation, and he established the precedent of working very closely with the Russians. | |
| Chechnya has a unique status as a republic where they are in charge of their own economy. | |
| They don't have to turn over money to the Russian Federation. | |
| All the money they earned, they can reinvest back in. | |
| And Chechnya is thriving. | |
| I just came from there. | |
| I visited Grozny in Chechnya just last month. | |
| I have to tell you, in 2002, Grozny was the most destroyed city in the world. | |
| Photographs show it looked like a nuclear bomb hit it. | |
| Today, It is a thriving modern city where you have mosques and Orthodox churches side by side, Russians and Chechens socializing, peace and prosperity is breaking out all over. | |
| Yeah, I mean, I think if people went in there and say, well, this isn't Jeffersonian democracy. | |
| Well, it's not meant to be. | |
| They had a civil war going just 15 years ago. | |
| What it is is a thriving society whose leadership and the vast majority of the people Are extremely loyal to Vladimir Putin because they know who's responsible for the changes. | |
| They know who made this prosperity possible. | |
| They know what Chechnya looked like, and they know what it looks like today. | |
| And they are fiercely loyal to Vladimir Putin, fiercely loyal. | |
| So when this Ukrainian conflict started, the Chechens raised a large number of forces and sent them Right now, there's 15,000 highly trained, well-equipped Chechen forces in the special military operation. | |
| A significant number of those were operating in the vicinity of Belgorod, and they were diverted to Rostov, several thousand of them, and they were ready. | |
| At a drop of the hat to take out the Wagner fighters. | |
| So they basically were surrounding the Wagner fighters and Purgosian. | |
| Yeah, if the Ahmad forces went forward, they would have cut off the Wagner fighters in Rostov, and the Wagner fighters would have quickly run out of ammunition, and they would have been annihilated. | |
| That's the reality. | |
| It would have been bloody fighting. | |
| The Wagner fighters are very good fighters, especially in an urban environment, but they would have been cut off from any supplies, and it would have been over very quick. | |
| And this is where Prigozhin finally had the moment. | |
| Vladimir Putin called him what he is, a traitor. | |
| He stabbed Russia in the back. | |
| Prigozhin's popularity plummeted. | |
| When this started, he was a very popular figure. | |
| Wagner enjoyed unprecedented levels of popularity. | |
| Throughout Russia, there were these giant billboards with recruiting posters for Wagner. | |
| Wagner had movies made about them. | |
| People were singing songs about the exploits of Wagner. | |
| Today, that's all over. | |
| All those posters are down, and people recognize Purgosian as the traitor he was, and there's a huge stain on the honor of the Wagner group, which, by the way, is going to be disbanded, because Purgosian came face to face with the fact that nobody rallied to him. | |
| He is a traitor. | |
| He was marked for death, and he had a choice to either continue and die and condemn all of his soldiers to death, Or he could back down, which he did. | |
| President Lukashenko of Belarus intervened on behalf, oversaw a negotiation. | |
| It wasn't a negotiation. | |
| It was a dictation. | |
| Prigozhin has agreed to withdraw all the Wagner forces. | |
| Prigozhin is going to be exiled into Belarus. | |
| He's being kicked out of Russia. | |
| He's going to be exiled to Belarus. | |
| He'll be under the supervision of Lukashenko. | |
| Every Wagner fighter that went into Russia that was knowledgeable of what Prigozhin is doing, They will be given a pardon, but they won't be allowed to join the Russian military. | |
| Their days as a fighter are over. | |
| The Wagner soldiers that remained in Russia or were misled will be permitted to sign a contract to join the Ministry of Defense, but Wagner as a unit is over. | |
| It's being disbanded. | |
| It's being broken up. | |
| So the 80% of the Wagner soldiers who remained in their barracks and refused to follow Prigozhin into the insurrection will now be signed into the Russian military. | |
| The 4,000 who followed Prigozhin and joined the insurrection will be drummed out of the military but pardoned. | |
| And Wagner itself is true. | |
| Yes. | |
| Okay. | |
| Anything else we need to know? | |
| There's a couple things. | |
| There's a lot of articles being written now about how this shows that Putin's regime is a house of cards, that Russia is weak, etc. | |
| And I think what this demonstrates is the exact opposite. | |
| Vladimir Putin remains the most popular Russian leader in history. | |
| And the fact that nobody defected from him during this time This was a stress test for Russia. | |
| It wasn't intentional. | |
| A lot of people are talking about some sort of Game of Thrones fantasy of Maskarovka and deception. | |
| No, this was a national tragedy. | |
| This was an embarrassment for Russia. | |
| You can't have just, again, when you become president, a military organization or Blackwater took up arms and marched on Washington, D.C., no matter how it was resolved, it would be an embarrassment for you. | |
| It'd be an embarrassment for the nation. | |
| This is an extremely embarrassing moment for Russia, for Vladimir Putin. | |
| But they came through it And what's important is it had no impact on the battlefield. | |
| The Russian military on the battlefield continued to perform. | |
| There were no breakthroughs by the Ukrainians. | |
| So anybody that was hoping that this incident would somehow lead to a collapse of Russia will be disappointed. | |
| If anything, from this embarrassment, I think Putin will emerge even stronger than before. | |
| Scott Ritter, thank you so much for updating us, and keep up the good work. | |
| Thank you very much. |