"Wagner" in Soledar. What awaits the mercenary leader Prigozhin

Pyrrhic victory

The White House believes that Prigozhin's attention to Soledar can also be explained by financial interests. By capturing this town, the head of the Wagner Group mercenaries would gain control over the salt and gypsum mines located there.

Telegram channels associated with Wagner actively covered the Russian advance. And on January 11, Prigozhin posted a photo of himself allegedly from the salt mines and hastened to boast that his mercenaries had taken Soledar. But the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the capture of the city only two days later.

“How did the operation near Soledar go? They pulled almost 10 battalion tactical groups from Bakhmut to the direction of Soledar. And all these battalion tactical groups have either already lost their combat capability or disappeared altogether. Because they used only manpower, not professional — tactical and strategic — skills. What kind of professional skills can a prisoner have?” says Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military and political observer at the Information Resistance group.

U.S. officials estimated the number of Wagnerites at 50,000, and the losses at the beginning of December at 4,100 killed and 10,000 wounded. This was before the start of active fighting in Soledar, where the Russians went on the offensive.

Former Ukrainian Defense Minister and Chairman of the Board of the Center for Defense Strategies Andrii Zahorodniuk suggests that Wagnerites could have lost tens of thousands of mercenaries in Soledar, although these figures are very approximate — it is impossible to calculate the exact losses.

This “Wagnerian” tactic raises doubt about the price the Russians paid for Soledar.

“They use tactics that work for them. This is a tactic of massive actions with huge losses, but these losses do not affect Russia's prestige or the morale of the troops. They can afford it because no one is worried about the Wagnerites. The death toll is enormous, but they don't care,” Zahorodniuk describes “Wagnerian tactics”.

The advance in Soledar was the first Russian success in the last six months. However, according to the Institute for the Study of War, the importance of a small town with a pre-war population of ten thousand for the entire frontline should not be overestimated.

“Russian information operations have overexaggerated the importance of Soledar, which is at best a Russian Pyrrhic tactical victory.” The Institute analysts add that the capture of Soledar "will not enable Russian forces to exert control over critical Ukrainian ground lines of communication into Bakhmut, nor better position Russian forces to encircle the city in the short term”.

No order in Russia's house

In his statement about the capture of Soledar, Prigozhin tellingly claimed that “no units other than the PMC Wagner fighters took part in the assault on the city”. On the other hand, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that their paratroopers attacked the city, without mentioning the Wagner fighters.

Prigozhin publicly responded that “they are constantly trying to steal victory from Wagner”. A few hours later, the Russian defense ministry issued a new statement saying that the assault on the city was made possible by the “courageous and selfless actions of volunteers of the PMC Wagner assault units”.

The exchange of such messages is a public continuation of a conflict that has long since surfaced, since Yevgeny Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov began to blame the Russian Ministry of Defense, in particular Colonel General Alexander Lapin and Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, for the failures in Ukraine.

“Many in the Russian military were against PMCs from the very beginning. Now they probably think that they were right. They probably hate Prigozhin for shaming them in front of Putin, although they may also realize that it may be the other way around. Putin is using Wagner and Prigozhin to indirectly criticize the MOD for their poor performance," explains Tor Bukkvoll, a senior researcher fellow at a Norwegian Defense Research Establishment who follows Wagner's activities.

He believes that the main conflict is now over weapons and ammunition, which Russia is increasingly experiencing a shortage of.

“If both are no longer available in abundance, then what Wagner is getting is not going to the regular Russian army,” says Bukkvoll.

The appointment of General Sergei Surovikin as the person in charge of the war in Ukraine in October was associated with an increase in the role of Prigozhin, who, along with Kadyrov, publicly supported him. However, less than three months later, Surovikin was replaced by Valery Gerasimov, the head of the Russian army's general staff, and the latter became his deputy.

Andrii Zahorodniuk explains that these changes are not about demoting Surovikin: “They simply raised the importance of this position, saying that now the management of the Russian war in Ukraine is a matter for the entire General Staff.”

Nevertheless, military expert Oleksandr Kovalenko suggests that these changes are because Surovikin and Prigozhin “did not meet all the expectations that Putin had for them”.

“Surovikin was dismissed for zero results along the entire frontline. I wouldn't even be surprised if Prigozhin is the scapegoat for the entire Bakhmut bridgehead,” Kovalenko said.

The expert notes that the change of leadership may affect how many weapons Wagnerites will be given in the future. After all, when Surovikin was in charge of Russian troops in Ukraine, mercenaries received generous amounts of weapons. Problems are already arising: in December, the Wagnerites publicly complained to the Ministry of Defense that they did not have enough shells.

But whether the conflict between Wagner and ministerial officials will lead to a global reshuffle in the Russian establishment is an equation with unknowns.

"Yes, there is a clear public dispute for the world to see. Watching senior Russian government officials and oligarchs snipe at each other is demonstrative of the economic, military, and foreign policy strain the Russian Federation is under. Russia's house is not in order. Whether the fracturing will lead to internal coups is the million-dollar question," said Jason M. Blazakis, a professor of practice at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, who studies terrorism.

Too close to the sun

Professor Blazakis advises not to take the words of Prigozhin about the exclusive role of mercenaries in Soledar at face value, because “he is well known to peddle disinformation”.

“That said, it is likely the Wagner Group played some role, perhaps an even more important than the Russian military, in efforts to take Soledar,” Blazakis said.

These assumptions are confirmed by British intelligence, which estimates that the Wagnerites played a key role in the assault on Soledar. From there, according to the British, they will continue their attack on Bakhmut.

After the advances in eastern Ukraine, Prigozhin will do everything possible to prove his indispensability to the Kremlin, says Andrii Zahorodniuk. In his opinion, Prigozhin will promote the idea in the media that only the Wagnerites can bring victory to Russia, and that the regular army will not succeed without them. And then the Wagnerites will try to repeat their tactics in other parts of the front, for example, approaching Bakhmut.

“These tactics cannot be scaled up to the whole of Ukraine, because they will not have so many people and will soon run out of steam, but for now they will promote it as the only way Russia can succeed,” Zahorodniuk predicts.

Despite the high price of Soledar for Wagner, the move toward Bakhmut will not necessarily bring the laurels that Prigozhin expects. The capture of Soledar will not significantly affect the significance of Prigozhin for Putin, suggests Tor Bukkvoll.

“I think Putin looks at Prigozhin as somebody he can use but also discard if he does not need him anymore. However, we cannot exclude that Prigozhin at some point may become so powerful as to escape Putin’s control,” Bukkvoll models various scenarios.

If Prigozhin really has such ambitions and wants to secure a place in post-Putin Russia, he should be careful, Professor Blazakis advises.

“If he flies too close to the sun, he will fall,” the professor reminds us of an instructive ancient Greek myth.