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news from ukraine: the leader of wagner group has accused the russian military of bombing his forces. seems to be preparing some kind of
coupspecial military operation. russian generals are asking mercenaries not to join in. prigozhin has vocally criticized russian military leaders recently, but this is a massive escalation. could we see a civil war break out in the middle of this war?update: prigozhin claims that he has entered rostov without resistance. lots of unverified videos on twitter of wagner/russian convoy movements, and some combat footage; wagner claims to have shot down a russian helicopter.
video of supposedly wagner soldiers and tanks surrounding the MoD building in rostov.
As of writing this post, Wagner appears to be in control of Rostov and Voronezh, and en route to Moscow.
Prigozhin is playing the game of thrones, and he's going to win or he's going to die. The path to victory for him looks pretty much like he walks into Moscow and all the people with guns get out of the way and let him do what he wants. It's... optimistic but not completely impossible, given the lack of resistance he's encountered so far.
If that doesn't happen and he actually gets meaningfully challenged it's difficult to see an outcome where he survives the coming week. Wagner is more competent than the regular Russian army but also much smaller and if this turns into an actual civil war he surely gets crushed. One way or another, I expect we'll see a clear winner and a clear loser before very long.
By whom, though?
At this point, this isn't Wagner vs the Russian Army- because the Russian army is literally in, and committed to, Ukraine, in the 90+% range even as the Ukrainian counterattack is (still) a very real thing. (The recent pause was not a culmination, and the majority of collected Ukrainian assets were never committed.) It's not like there's a massive third army behind the Urals waiting to move against someone moving within Russia.
Moreover, the Russian Army is capital-U unreliable at this point, at least from an anti-coup perspective. The rivalries between Wagner and the MOD are at the leader level- but Prigozhin is far more popular than Shugoi, and we have visible evidence of entire military centers letting Wagner not only pass through unopposed, but take over Russian military and government institutional facilities. They are, at best, apathetic, not unquestionably loyal.
The answer is, of course, the various internal security forces... but these are largely local, and tend not to have the things like armor and artillery and coordinated airpower. With the armor and artillery, well, committed, you're looking more at the equivalent of American SWAT teams trying to learn to call in the air force.
None of this means that Wagner won't fail/is impossible to win, but this isn't likely to have a crushing overmatch with a climatic battle, because there's no unified conventional force to wage that climatic battle due to local availability and trust that they wouldn't just join Wanger.
What this is likely to look like is a militia-vs-militia-level fighting, which the Russian Security Forces will likely win in the defense, but a counter-attack will be extremely problematic in the inverse. The power- and assets- have to come from somewhere, and it's not readily apparent whom and from where.
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