Leaderless and exposed, Russia’s Wagner faces an uncertain future

Wagner, the once-powerful Russian private military company that fell out of favor with the Kremlin after an aborted mutiny in June, has been cast into even greater uncertainty since Wednesday, when its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died in a plane crash.

It is unlikely that Russia wants to squander the trained fighters, geopolitical inroads and business interests that Prigozhin cultivated since Wagner’s founding in 2014. His outfit has operated in at least 10 countries.

But finding a way to neutralize an armed organization that posed one of the biggest threats to Putin’s tenure in 23 years, while also retaining its fighting power and global links, is a difficult task, particularly given the long-standing enmity between fighters with the private military company and the leadership of the Russian Defense Ministry.

Alexander Borodai, a member of Russian parliament who briefly served as a Moscow-installed proxy leader in Donetsk, Ukraine, in 2014, said in a phone interview that Wagner fighters would continue to fight and were already joining volunteer formations, as well as official units, under the Russian armed forces.

Putin has sent mixed signals on his plans.

During a meeting at the Kremlin after the mutiny in late June, Putin told Wagner commanders they could continue serving together under different leadership, he said last month in an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant. Putin said Prigozhin refused on his commanders’ behalf, even though some shook their heads in agreement.

In the same interview, Putin also said Wagner doesn’t exist, because Russian law doesn’t permit private military companies.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has made similar remarks, which appear to be aimed at signaling that the group, as it stands, has no future in Russia.

Catrina Doxsee, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said she expected the model that Prigozhin developed — using a shadowy parastatal organization to advance international interests but also do business — to continue in some form in Russia. But she suspected that future such operations might be more fractured.

Putin is also likely to ensure that any subsequent operations avoid the kind of enmity with the Russian military leadership that Prigozhin cultivated.