The rivalry between Yevgeny Prigozhin, the then-head of the Wagner Group, and Sergei Shoigu, a member of the leadership of the Russian Federation Ministry of Defence (MoD), began in 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine which ultimately led to the Wagner Group rebellion on 23 and 24 June 2023. According to United States officials, there were longstanding disputes between Prigozhin and Shoigu "for years" prior to the invasion of Ukraine. These tensions escalated with further public visibility during this stage of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Following significant casualties of the Russian Ground Forces in the initial stages of the invasion, authorities sought to enlist mercenaries after President Vladimir Putin delayed a mobilization for reservists. Prigozhin and the Wagner Group were allocated significant resources and gained the authority to recruit inmates from Russian prisons in exchange for their freedom.
Despite lacking any official position or legal authority, Prigozhin gained international recognition with the Wagner Group soon being perceived as his own private army. Dissatisfaction arose within the MoD and the General Staff, leading to efforts to curtail Prigozhin's growing influence. In early 2023, Prigozhin announced that Wagner had ceased recruiting prisoners, which the British Defence Ministry interpreted as a governmental ban on such practices. It was expected to diminish Wagner's fighting capacity.
Conversely, Prigozhin portrayed himself as a populist figure confronting the military establishment. At several points throughout the invasion, he criticized the Russian command, and was one of the few who complained to Putin about the military commanders, due to his increased influence. Prigozhin primarily targeted the MoD, denoting its officials as corrupt. However, he also criticized other segments of the Russian elite, criticizing them for enjoying a luxurious life while ordinary people die in the war. He gained particular influence for his statements within the ultranationalist Russian milblogger community, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Tensions between the Wagner Group and MoD reached a critical juncture during the battle of Bakhmut, with increasing isolation afterwards. Prigozhin repeatedly voiced his dissatisfaction with the Kremlin's inadequate ammunition supply, threatening to withdraw his forces unless his demands were fulfilled. He particularly blamed Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov for significant casualties among Wagner fighters.
Following the Russian proclamation of victory in Bakhmut in late May 2023, Wagner began to withdraw, giving way to regular troops. Internal conflicts persisted between Wagner and the military during this transition. Prigozhin claimed repeatedly that the Russian military assaulted his forces. A major surge in popularity came after he publicly accused influential individuals of actively sabotaging his highly profitable catering enterprise in association with the Russian military. This marked a notable shift in his public perception from a non-political to a political persona. In May 2024, Putin replaced Shoigu with Andrey Belousov as defence minister, appointing the former secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.
Background
Growing influence of Wagner Group
According to Meduza, on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin developed tense relations with the Russian leadership. According to its sources, Prigozhin was in conflict with both the MoD and the Presidential Administration. Prigozhin criticized Shoigu for the actions of the Russian army in Syria, saying that the Russian military was operating with "outdated methods". In turn, Shoigu did not like the provision of food for the Russian army by Prigozhin's companies.
Between 2022 and 2023 during the invasion, Prigozhin and Wagner experienced a sharp rise in their influence. During 2017 and 2018, Wagner's membership numbers were estimated at several thousand. By January 2023, the number had reached 50,000 according to Western intelligence estimates.
The growth of Wagner's influence was attributed to the failure of the Russian leadership's initial plans to quickly defeat Ukraine. In the first months of the invasion, the Russian army suffered significant losses, but Putin delayed the announcement of mobilization for a significant period. Under such conditions, Russian authorities began to actively recruit mercenaries to participate in the hostilities. Thus, a large number of heterogeneous Russian silovik forces began to take part in the invasion, apart from the main military branches and the Donbas republics' militias: the National Guard, Kadyrovites, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and various private military companies. Internal competition began to emerge between these forces.
According to Prigozhin, the Russian leadership approached him on 16 March 2022 when the Russian invasion of Ukraine "did not go according to plan". On 19 March, his mercenaries arrived from Africa and immediately engaged in the battle of Popasna. During 2022, Wagner received significant resources including its own aviation, heavy artillery and the right to recruit Russian prisoners. Wagner functioned as a Prigozhin's private army, acting outside of Russian law and the military hierarchy of the Russian Federation. The MoD and the Russian General Staff were unhappy with this situation and began to try to limit Prigozhin's growing influence. In turn, he began to publicly criticize the MoD in harsh terms, including calling Russian commanders who allowed Russian forces to retreat in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions "bastards".
On 24 October 2022, the Institute for the Study of War wrote that Prigozhin and his Wagner were gaining strength, creating parallel military structures to the MoD, which posed a future threat to Putin's power. In the fall of 2022, Prigozhin sarcastically said that he was building the "Wagner line" so that, according to him, the Russian armed forces that were hiding behind the backs of Wagner would feel safe.
Prigozhin's rise to fame
Prigozhin became well known after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Prior to that, he long denied his ties with the Wagner Group and would sue journalists who claimed otherwise; only in the fall of 2022 did he admit that he was the founder of Wagner. Wagner existed outside of the legal framework of Russia, and back in 2018, the Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said, "De jure we do not have such legal entities as private military companies". Regardless, in the course of the war with Ukraine, Wagner started to become a recognized entity. The Russian state media began to mention Wagner more often; billboards began to appear in Russian cities advertising Prigozhin's military company and members would even come to Russian schools to participate in "Important conversations" classes. By January 2023, a legal entity named "PMC Wagner Centre" of the same name appeared in Saint Petersburg. Prigozhin also gained international recognition and abandoned his previously secluded personal life, frequently reporting news from the line while wearing military fatigues. Prior to that, there was not a single legal entity with Wagner in its name in Russia.
After a video of Yevgeny Nuzhin's execution with a sledgehammer appeared on the Internet in November 2022, Prigozhin made the sledgehammer one of Wagner's symbols. Prigozhin created an image of a military leader who is ready to deal with traitors and refuseniks in the most brutal way. However, according to the Vyorstka Media publication, Prigozhin's reputation among Russian participants in the invasion of Ukraine was ambiguous. Some of the military supported him and even some wrote reports on their transfer to Wagner. For example, one of the officers interviewed by journalists said, "I can say for our guys that almost everyone is for him. The guy is serious. Shoigu is an asshole, it's a fact". According to a Russian mobilizer, support for Prigozhin was due to the incompetence of the commanders of the Russian regular army and the lies of the MoD's top officials. However, part of the military sharply criticized Prigozhin and Wagner, in particular for the practice of extrajudicial executions. Former Wagner employees told reporters on condition of anonymity that their attitude towards Prigozhin was changed by the publication of the video of Nuzhin's execution They became frightened that Wagner had become a "beaten down" organization, and they saw Prigozhin as "crazy", "out of control" and not saving other people's lives.
A source for the iStories publication said:
Prigozhin is a popular theory among the siloviks: He is the sword of Damocles hanging over the elite, and is needed to curb it and maintain an atmosphere of fear. In his opinion, Prigozhin's activity was coordinated with Putin, who, knowing the doubts of the Russian elites about the necessity of war with Ukraine, threatened them with Prigozhin, whose activity is not limited by the law. It has been suggested that Prigozhin's activity was necessary for Putin to "keep defence minister Sergei Shoigu and his subordinates in line".
Another iStories source close to the MoD said that Wagner was fully dependent on the ammunition supply, logistics, medical and other military infrastructure that without which Prigozhin's army would have quickly become ineffective. Although Prigozhin was an irritant to many in the FSB and the MoD, Wagner continued to operate at the instigation of the president. Another journalist source from among former security services suggested that the Kremlin was preparing Prigozhin to fill the political niche of the deceased Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and that Prigozhin could also be assigned the role of "supervisor" of war veterans in Ukraine after their return to Russia, so that combat veterans would not create problems for authorities. According to the iStories interlocutor, none of the "systemic politicians" that existed in Russia were suitable for this role since combat veterans did not recognize such politicians while they all knew Prigozhin. At the same time, Putin needed a personally dedicated politician which Prigozhin seemed to fit the role. Given a hypothetical negative development of events for the Putin regime, according to the interlocutor of journalists, it was Prigozhin who could be assigned the role of "Putin's guardsman" who would be able to carry out a demonstrative beating of the Russian elite: repression and execution. Many political observers also compared Prigozhin and his PMC to the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible. At the same time, a businessman close to Putin's entourage said that Prigozhin was "more about money than politics", and that according to him, Prigozhin was a member of Putin's inner circle, being personally loyal to the Russian president and "tied to him by blood".
Conflict
Tensions enter the public sphere
First public accusations
In December 2022, Wagner first sounded out loud accusations against the MoD. Videos circulating on Telegram alleged that Wagner fighters had appealed to the Gerasimov because of the problems in providing their units with shells, with fighters calling Gerasimov a "faggot" and a "devil". Prigozhin himself said about the statement at the time: "As for the appeal to Gerasimov, I agree that the wording should be more correct. However, the problems that exist should be dealt with jointly". In an interview with the BBC, one of the former Wagner fighters said, "I think it's a conflict between the Defence Ministry and Prigozhin. And it is escalating". The BBC journalists noted that although various public conflicts between Russian siloviks have occurred repeatedly since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, citing an example in the conflict between Alexander Khodakovsky and Kadyrovites, no one had previously publicly called the Chief of the Russian General Staff a "faggot".
In January 2023, Prigozhin and the MoD had a dispute in absentia over whose merit was the capture of Soledar. The head of Wagner claimed that Soledar was captured only by his fighters, while the MoD did not mention the Wagnerites in its reports on the battle of Soledar for a long time. Then Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said the conflict between Prigozhin and the MoD exists only in the information field.
Criticism of Sergei Shoigu's family
Family members of Shoigu also became an object of mockery by Prigozhin. On 20 February 2023, in his address to the MoD, Prigozhin said, "I am not poking you in the nose with the fact that you sit down to breakfast, lunch and dinner from gold dishes, and send your daughters, granddaughters and dogs on vacation in Dubai. Not embarrassed by anything. At a time when a Russian soldier is dying at the front. I'm just asking – give me ammunition!" In February 2023, Shoigu's son-in-law Alexei Stolyarov liked Yuri Dud's anti-war post on Instagram. After it gained media attention, Stolyarov even got into a skirmish with one of his critics, calling him a "Z-scum", but Stolyarov claimed that he was "not liking anything". Prigozhin stated, "we have to catch Stolyarov and bring him to me. I will train him for six weeks, and since I am a Z-scum myself, I will help him to reform by sending him to combat".
In May 2023, Prigozhin spoke out once more against the Shoigu family:
Shoigu's son-in-law walks around shaking his buttocks, meaning his buttocks, and his daughter opens the Kronstadt forts. Did you earn money for these forts?! You spend your money on these forts? Spend it on fucking ammunition. And when the Minister of Defence shakes his little daughter and shakes some motherfucker who's a blogger, and also bends his fingers that he doesn't like the special operation... We didn't come up with this special operation, but we took a visor and said: 'If we went to fuck with our neighbors, we should fuck all the way'".[1] Criticizing the idle lifestyle of the children of the Russian elite, Prigozhin noted, "and it turns out that men are fighting, while some people just like to have fun. How can Shoigu's son-in-law go to the Arab Emirates and shake his 'booty'? Obviously, it's a bit gay. It's so fucking gay, but that's okay, it's their family's choice"