2023-09-11 13:00:07
For Lou Osborn and Dimitri Zufferey, authors of an in-depth investigation into Wagner, the paramilitary group will perhaps disappear in its current form, but it is such a “beautiful tool” for Moscow as a new version of the group more adapted to the needs of the Kremlin will inevitably resurface.
Since the death, confirmed by Moscow, of the leader of the Wagner group Yevgeny Prigozhin, experts have been wondering whether the Russian paramilitary organization will manage to survive without its leader and if so, in what way and in what form.
Alex Reeds Monday on the RTS show Tout un monde, Lou Osborn and Dimitri Zufferey, the authors of the book “Wagner: investigation at the heart of the Prigojine system” (to be published at the end of the week by Editions du Faubourg) do not have doubt regarding the persistence in the future, if not of the Wagner group itself, at least of new groups with similar functioning and built on the ashes of Yevgeni Prigozhin’s organization.
Other entities of the same kind
“It will be quite difficult for the group as we know it today to survive the decapitation of its command, particularly because Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch who led the organization, had become persona non grata since the mutiny”, says Lou Osborn first of all.
The concept experimented with and implemented by Wagner will survive. Take other forms. Moscow is not going to do without such a beautiful tool!
Lou Osborn, freelance investigator
But before Wagner, the two investigators immediately warn, there were already other entities of the same kind. Some started to get in the way and were dismantled by those in power. “Each time, new iterations try to improve, to better meet the Kremlin’s objectives […] The concept experimented with and implemented by Wagner will survive and take other forms. Moscow is not going to do without such a beautiful tool!”, says the researcher. “It is an absolutely essential diplomatic instrument in the hands of the Kremlin today,” adds Dimitri Zufferey.
This is one of the two functions of these groups that make them so useful for Moscow: that of being tools of influence, explain the two investigators. They offer, in a way, regime preservation services: security actions, military training, joint operations with the client state, even , the benefits of which partly fall on Russia’s image.
Wagner on the marketing side
In Wagner’s case, the group was practicing a form of exhibition. Its leader Evgeni Prigozhin himself loved to vent on social networks. “There is a very public part, very communication, very marketing. In Russia, it contributes to the aura of the group, to recruitment. It’s also fantastic for researchers like us, because it leaves a lot of traces,” emphasizes Lou Osborn.
When they are deployed abroad, they try to earn money by taking control of the natural resources of the country in which they are established.
Lou Osborn
Being a tool of influence for the benefit of Russian power is only one of the two faces of the Wagner group. Its other face brings it closer to a criminal organization, supported by a structure made up of several companies, “Concord”. The activities of the Wagner militia also have the function of bringing money to this consortium: “When they are deployed abroad, they try to remunerate themselves – in addition to the security contracts that exist – by taking over the natural resources of the country in which they are established”, explains the co-author of the survey.
It is also this face of the paramilitary group that the Kremlin attacked to put it back on the right path. “At the time of the mutiny, there were already talks to dismantle the “Concord” empire, particularly its entire media part. In the past, when the Kremlin wanted to get rid of oligarchs, there was this phenomenon of annihilating their economic empire to economically kill the oligarchs in question. We are in a fairly traditional Kremlin process,” analyzes Lou Osborn.
>> Read also: Vladimir Putin’s enemies victims of mysterious “incidents”
Other Wagners, but not necessarily other Prigojines
For the two investigators, if Vladimir Putin let Evgeni Prigojine go so far before intervening in the group’s affairs, it is because he served as a spokesperson bringing out criticism that cannot emerge otherwise, as a surety demonstrating that dissenting voices are possible in Russia.
According to Dimitri Zufferey, it was ultimately the Kremlin which pushed Evgeni Prigozhin to try everything during his march on Moscow, leaving the group with only two choices which did not suit them: to merge into the Russian army. or go into exile outside the country.
The two months between the mutiny and Prigozhin’s death? A reprieve granted by Putin to see what will be the future ‘brand’ that will take over from Wagner
Dimitri Zufferey, investigator and journalist at RTS
“The two months between the mutiny and the death of Yevgeni Prigozhin were a sort of reprieve granted by Vladimir Putin in order to allow a little time to reorganize, to see what the future franchise will be, the future brand that will take over of the Wagner group”, estimates Dimitri Zufferey. “What is missing is a real thinking head, a head at the head of the hydra, who is able to take up the figure and the role played by Yevgeni Prigozhin. And there’s really very little chance that a figure like that will emerge.”
>> Read also: What next for the Wagner paramilitary group without Yevgeni Prigozhin?
Comments collected by Eric Guevara-Frey
Adaptation web: Vincent Cherpillod
1694437953
#missing #thinking #Wagner #hydra #rts.ch
