How a successful Ukrainian spring counteroffensive could lead to Putin’s downfall and Yevgeny Prigozhin’s elevation to president

Yevgeny Prigozhin has come a long way since his decade in Soviet prisons for robbery and other crimes and his role as caterer and close friend of fellow St. Petersburg native Vladimir Putin. Thanks to his relationship with the Russian president, Prigozhin was able to join the ranks of the fabulously wealthy Russian oligarchs. And in 2014, he founded Wagner Group, which played a key role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

In the ensuing years, the Wagner Group played a leading role in ensuring that the Assad regime survived in Syria and established a major foothold in several former French colonies, notably the Central African Republic and Mali, while also actively working with anti-government forces in Cote D’Ivoire.

Ever seeking new opportunities to expand Russian, and its own, influence in Africa, in 2023 Wagner forces were supporting the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries, led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, who were battling government forces in what was developing into another all-out civil war in that country.

The Wagner Group originally had relatively tough recruiting standards. Nevertheless, its personnel were no match for the very small force of American Marines and Green Berets, supported by combat aviation and drones, who thoroughly crushed an armored attack by the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Wagner mercenaries. When the fighting was over, some 300 of the attackers lay dead on the Syrian battlefield; not a single American was harmed.

The Wagner Group’s most important role, however, has been in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, whatever standards Wagner may have set for its recruits disappeared when Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Prigozhin received permission to hire prisoners to serve as cannon fodder for Wagner’s offensive operations. The Group’s units contributed to Russian successes earlier in the war, though they reportedly failed on more than one occasion to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Notorious for their brutality in all their previous operations, the Wagner units went even further in Ukraine. They took no prisoners, killing all whom they captured. Resorting to practices virtually unheard of since the Middle Ages, Wagner personnel beheaded Ukrainian soldiers and others and mounted them on spikes — in the true spirit of another Vladimir, the 15th Century King Vladimir III of Wallachia, better known as Vlad the Impaler.

The growth in the Wagner Group’s notoriety has paralleled Prigozhin’s increasingly public persona. After years of denying any connection with the Group, in late September 2022 Prigozhin finally took credit for participating in its creation and financing its operations. He opened a new headquarters for the Wagner Group in St. Petersburg. When he was prevented from continuing to recruit fresh bodies in Russia’s jails, a decision that he vehemently protested and blamed on the Russian military, Prigozhin established three new recruiting centers at sports clubs in three Russian cities.

Prigozhin has a thriving public relations operation that is active on social media. Moreover, he has become a vocal critic of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s leading generals, arguing that they are incompetent and that his Wagner forces are the reason Russia has made any progress in Ukraine.

Indeed, he asserted that the defense ministry withheld ammunition that his forces needed to finish the job in Bakhrushina, where they have served as the vanguard of the Russian effort to capture the town. He also asserted that the Russian military command headquarters in Ukraine had turned a deaf ear to his needs.  

Most recently on April 14, Prigozhin denounced the Russian “deep state” and called for an end to the Russian operation, asserting that Moscow should consolidate the gains it had already made. It is not at all clear how Putin, who has shown no sign of his willingness to bring his “special military operation” to a halt, has reacted to his supposed confidant’s remarks.

Nor is it clear how Putin has reacted to Prigozhin’s planned creation of a new “conservative political movement,” which, though he leads together with key supporters of the president, could nevertheless be a springboard for what are increasingly seen as Prigozhin’s ambitions for high office.

Prigozhin is still seen as a close Putin ally. But that could change if the expected Ukrainian spring counteroffensive proves successful. In that case, Prigozhin might patch up his differences with the numerous disgruntled generals whom Putin has dismissed. And then the former jailbird, caterer, oligarch and Wagner financier may well engineer his own elevation to the presidential office that his erstwhile friend occupies.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy under secretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.