This week American citizens were asked to leave Russia, in a signal that the escalation between Russia and the West is about to get a lot more intense as all eyes turn to the battlefield in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. This happens as we approach February 24 — an important date — the one year anniversary of the Ukraine invasion.
Will Putin do something extraordinary on that day, or leading up to it, even as the new offensive escalates? Does Putin need to show something for a war that has cost Russia “gigantic” losses, perhaps in the tens of thousands of men? We will know the answer in less than two weeks. But Russia itself, in forthcoming generations, will ultimately have to reckon with the demographic loss of tens — perhaps hundreds of thousands — of killed, seriously injured and also military aged defectors, who all happen to be men. It is indeed ironic that Putin — chauvinistic ethnonationalist that he is — will have been the cause of that very dark reckoning.
Three weeks after Germany greenlighted Leopard 2 tanks re-exported to Ukraine (after, of course, the US got on board with M1 tanks), soldiers have begun training exercises. The training exercises are taking place in Poland. Polish instructor Krzysztof Sieradzki told Euronews that training in Leopard 2s usually takes two months, but has been accelerated for the 105 Ukrainian troops has been accelerated to one month. Why does the Ukrainian army covet them so? The Leopard 2s are famed for their speed and accuracy on the battlefield. “The Leopard 2 was originally designed in the 1970s for the West German army in response to Soviet threats during the Cold War,” writes Becky Sullivan for NPR. “They are built to move quickly over a variety of terrain and confront enemy armor — like the tanks Russia has been using on the ground in Ukraine since the first days of its invasion last year.” The news comes two days after Russia admitted it used mercenaries — the Wagner Group — to take Krasna Hora on the northern edge of Bakhmut, which is the prize city that everyone is after.
The Wagner Group is Vladimir Putin’s personal black-ops organization, created to allow for the plausible deniability of Russian war crimes overseas. Putin likes to think of Wagner as Blackwater (albeit, circa 2005), in a jab to one of his least favorite American Presidents. The Wagner Group, named after Hitler’s favorite composer, is infamous for “wet work” in Syria, in the Ukraine and in Africa. More and more, The Wagner Group, which does its best murder operating in the shadows, is becoming the very opposite of shadowy, it is becoming an actual beat in national security reporting. Wagner’s high visibility is not helping Putin’s cause.
CNN, in particular, has done a good job covering the exploits of Putin’s mercenaries in particular and the Ukraine war effort in general. So has The Guardian, regarding Wagner. And The Daily Mail, which is best known for its exhaustive coverage of Emily Ratajkowsky in various states of undress, has also been pretty solid, which suggests that the Russian mercenary outfit is clearly driving eyeballs on the internet, which is rare. American attention for foreign wars not our own is notoriously low.
CNN has interviewed at least three Wagner Group defectors. One of the defectors was actually recruited in a Russian penal colony on a 20-year term for manslaughter (!). This suggests to me that it is probably not a good idea for Western media to valorize these Wagner defectors, no matter how important the information they provide. It should be noted that defection from the Wagner Group is not entirely without risks. The mercenary group has thus far released two sledgehammer snuff films of captured defectors being killed on camera (note: no link to the actual video).
Another Wagner Group recruit Andrei Medvedev (above), an actual volunteer (?!), who defected crossing Norway's arctic border from Russia. Since then, he has been speaking out about Russian atrocities during the Ukraine war. But, one wonders, what did he expect from Wagner? Still, as he was helped by the human rights community in his defection from the battlefront, he is probably going to be a major asset in building a case against Putin and Progozhin at the Hague, if indeed that ever even occurs.
Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin is a name that has been mentioned often, although his fortunes appear to be falling as of this week. Prighozin began his career selling hot dogs and now — mirabile dictu! — is back in the business of the mongering meat, albeit this time of the human flesh variety. "They are throwing people in as meat, with small arms on armored vehicles," Medvedev, 26 years old, told ABC.
More and more, Wagner defectors are providing hard to get information, feeding the growing need for content about the dark underbelly of the Russian invasion. The Insider, a site founded by journalist and political activist, Roman Dobrokhotov that tracks Putin’s secrets, interviewed “Gennedy” — name changed — about his time at the Wagner Group, when they were recruiting from Russian prisons:
They only accept people who are not afraid and who are adequate. They don't accept rapists or the ”lower caste.” They speak very politely, and I have no complaints against them. They asked me: ”Why do you want that?” and I said, ”I saw how Zelensky released those convicts who torture people. I'm going to go kill them. I'm not interested in Putin and Zelensky, war is war. And those who abuse women and children - I will bomb them.” They read my case file and said: ”If you pass a polygraph test, we will take you”.
Charmed, I’m sure.
It is straight out of Dostoyevsky. Prigozhin, according to reports, promised the prisoners 100,000 to 230,000 rubles per month to enlist in the Ukraine, with preference being given to those convicted of murder (!). That, unfortunately, tells you precisely what kind of Spring offensive Putin has in mind against the people of the Ukraine. Prighozin, remarkably honest to criminals — game recognize game? — told the prisoners that 80% would not be coming back.
And Prigozhin wasn’t lying. The UK’s Minister of Defense this weekend noted that Russia’s early Spring offensive has cost them over 800 soldiers in the last few days. A lot of them, however, are probably prisoners so there will be little political costs. However, Prigozhin’s “rise” has not been without some backlash. “But there are obstacles to Mr. Prigozhin’s rise,” Anton Troianovski writes for The New York Times:
He is facing public blowback in St. Petersburg, his home base, as he tries to exert control over the politics of the city, Russia’s second largest. Wagner has suffered heavy casualties in the battle for Bakhmut. And Mr. Prigozhin is dogged by open questions and criticism in Moscow, where analysts doubt that his recruitment of prisoners and endorsement of extrajudicial executions have broad appeal. On Thursday, Mr. Prigozhin said that he was no longer recruiting from Russian prisons.
David Patrikarakos, is embedded for the Daily Mail in the Ukraine Special Forces on the frontlines in Bakhmut. His superlative reporting on how the Wagner Group recruits actually fight is worth paying some attention to. “They are used like meat in a grinder, their job is to just advance and die, advance and die,” he says of the convicts. They are almost literally fodder for the front lines. Patrikarakos makes some particularly interesting assertions from watching drone footage, such as that Wagner soldiers are probably high on drugs. He calls them the “zombie army.” “The soldiers here don’t know what type of drugs the Wagner men have been given, but they seem to turn them into zombies — able to march unflinchingly toward Ukrainian lines, even as their comrades around them drop like flies,” he writes.
The war is edging towards the prime objective, Bakhmut, which has only about 5,000 civilians remaining, compared to a pre-war population of 73,000. Russian rockets are already being aimed at civilian infrastructure in the Donetsk region, which is clearly an early sign of the particularly nasty Spring offensive to come. We are in the early stages of that offensive as the Ukrainians rush to master their newly acquired Western weapons and recruits, while Russia is amassing hundreds of thousands of new troops at the border. And after Bakhmut, if Putin is successful, military experts predict he will go after Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
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