High losses and increasingly sharp criticism: mercenary boss Wagner gets Tesla nerves and operational risk called Elon Musk

Yevgeny Prigozhin never misses an opportunity to praise the alleged heroism of his Wagner mercenaries. But even in the Russian public, the dreaded private army and its equally ruthless leader are growing increasingly unpopular.

The hand-crafted and filmed execution of a Wagner deserter with a sledgehammer already confirmed Prigozchin’s reputation for absolute ruthlessness. The return from the front of the convicted quadruple murderer Alexander Tyutkin is now sparking a new wave of outrage.

According to Russian reports, the 66-year-old businessman was sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2021 for allowing a competitor’s family of four to be wiped out by hitmen.

In June 2022, Prigozhin recruited him into the penal camp for his Wagner group, although the maximum recruitment age is 50 years old. In December, Tyutkin returned safely from Ukraine after completing his six-month contract and then fled to Turkey. This so angered the relatives and friends of Tyutkin’s victims that even Russian media such as St. Petersburg’s “47News” channel began reporting about it.

According to the “Nowaja Gazeta”, another serious criminal, the clan gangster Anton Ionov, has just been released from Wagner’s service; he should have been serving an 11-year prison sentence as of 2018 for various crimes such as aggravated assault and drug trafficking. But thanks to having survived Wagner’s efforts at the front, he too is free again.

As might be expected, Prigozhin dismisses all criticism of the recruitment of serious criminals. Fighters like Tyutkin are worth three or four mobilized Russian soldiers, according to a statement published on the Telegram channel of Concord Group, Prigozhin’s catering company.

Prigozhin disparagingly refers to regular Russian army personnel as “dandelion boys”. Journalists who pester him with such requests are “cats” who would rather contact him for the fight in Ukraine. Tyutkin, on the other hand, personally killed seven Ukrainian soldiers during a combat operation.

Such tirades seem neither believable nor sovereign. The appalling recent loss numbers no doubt add to Prigozhin’s obviously frail nerves. Earlier this week, the non-governmental organization “Rus Sidyaschshaya” reported that of the 50,000 Wagner mercenaries recruited from Russian prison camps, only 10,000 remained at the front. The rest were killed or wounded, disappeared or abandoned.

While war reporter Kurt Pelda of CH Media casts doubt on this massive failure rate, the “New York Times” this week also reported huge losses. The American reporters base their analysis on the number of graves in a military cemetery of Wagner using satellite images: the number of graves had increased sevenfold within two months to the end of January; In addition, according to the New York Times, there are a large number of unreported cases of cremated Wagner mercenaries.

Duma should forbid any criticism of Wagner

Growing criticism of his mercenary force has prompted Prigozhin to launch a domestic counterattack. In a letter dated Tuesday, he called on the Russian parliament to ban any form of criticism of his troops. Thanks to this change in the law, it should be forbidden in the future to openly criticize the volunteer fighters and ex-prisoners.

According to Prigozhin, this provision should not only apply in connection with the ongoing “special operation” in Ukraine, but also protect Wagner mercenaries from previous wars. In addition, if the Duma passes the bill, any evidence of crimes committed by Wagner fighters in civilian life will be punishable by imprisonment.

Prigozhin justifies his political initiative by maintaining morale: “The aim (of the critics) is to create negative public sentiment against the most effective organizations celebrating maximum success on the battlefield, and to weaken them by public condemnation of civil society.” Such practices must be “strictly” suppressed in order to strengthen Russian society against outside threats.

Whether Prigozhin will be successful with his legislative initiative published on Telegram ultimately depends on Vladimir Putin and the importance that the Kremlin ruler wants to give to the powerful mercenary leader in the future. Already in the battles for Bachmut, there was much to suggest that the Russian army command deliberately bled out the Wagner units in order to tie back the feared rival in the smoldering power struggle. (aargauerzeitung.ch)