The Telegraph

The private armies Putin has unleashed on Ukraine may lead to his downfall

Colonel Richard Kemp – June 4, 2023

Putin’s misadventures in Ukraine could lead to violent turmoil across Russia and the regime’s end. In recent weeks we have seen humiliating drone strikes against Moscow, in the Bryansk and Klimovsky regions, Krasnodar district and Belgorod city. There has been shelling of the Belgorod region, intensified this week and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people.

In a major blow to Putin’s authority earlier in May, the Russian Volunteer Corps and Freedom of Russia Legion launched a two-day raid across the Ukrainian border into Belgorod. This was followed in the past few days by an even more powerful ground operation. The Russian MoD reported that on Thursday, two motorised infantry companies with tanks were attacking again in Belgorod, four miles from the border with Ukraine. It had to use fighter jets and artillery on its own soil to counter them.

These attacks are hugely significant: they represent the first external military ground offensive on to mainland Russian territory since the Second World War. They might well have consequences to match.

Despite Kyiv’s denials that it was involved in either of the Belgorod raids, the intention now may be to sow panic inside Russia, forcing Moscow to pull forces away from the front line as the Ukrainian counter-offensive builds. If such raids continue they could have a more fundamental effect, perhaps creating even greater discontent among the people in the border regions who have already suffered more than most Russian civilians from Putin’s war. Taken together with the failures so far of the Russian army and the growing harm to the country’s economy, this could set off a chain reaction that spreads to Moscow itself.

Putin, once thought of as a strategic genius, has unwittingly prepared the ground for what might follow. As he sought to privatise recruitment to fuel his war rather than impose another wave of forced mobilisation, private armies have snowballed. The biggest is Wagner, active in Ukraine since 2014 and now grown into a monster. Hot on its heels is Kadyrovtsy, the private army of infamous Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. It is a large force notorious for brutal war crimes in Ukraine and about to return to front-line combat there.

Many other private armies have been set up by former military officers, often made up of ex-servicemen, funded, equipped and trained by state resources. Remarkably to the non-Russian mind, even defence minister Sergei Shoigu has one of his own, Patriot. There are corporate militias as well, such as that belonging to the energy giant Gazprom, which has battalions fighting at the front.

Oligarchs including Gennady Timchenko and Oleg Deripaska have created their own combat units or attached themselves to existing private military companies. Tellingly, as Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin himself remarked: “Everyone is saying that there will be a power struggle at some point, and everyone needs their own army.”

The Kremlin has also instructed authorities in each region to create their own volunteer battalions to fight in Ukraine, with allegiance to the local leadership rather than Moscow. Some of these men will return home disillusioned and embittered.

Putin sees these armies as instruments to consolidate his own power and that of the Russian state, not as political players in their own right. But when the chips are down he may not be able to call the shots. Prigozhin, for example, is a politically ambitious and volatile man. Although he has declared war on the general staff and Moscow’s “elites”, he has remained loyal to Putin. It might not take much for that to change. He is unlikely to balk at using the forces at his disposal to manoeuvre for power and influence when he feels the time is right.

Following Bakhmut, Prigozhin’s militia is now pulling back from the front line to its bases across Russia. That leaves a large group of armed, battle-hardened men, including many convicted criminals, at their leader’s command and poised for the fray.

Alongside – or opposed to them – are many others, not just the private military companies and regional battalions, but also the plethora of armed organs of the government, including the FSB, GRU and Defence Ministry. Then there is the army itself, whose ranks include large numbers of abused, humiliated and disaffected soldiers, commanders and even generals. If Putin cannot repel the growing threats to his own homeland and at the same time secure some kind of victory in Ukraine, it is possible to envisage the Russian establishment falling apart into a violent mêlée of opposing armed camps.

Perhaps we should not wish this bleak fate on the people of the Russian Federation, but we should certainly wish to see the back of their current leadership with the industrialized murder, mayhem and misery they have inflicted and, given the chance, will continue to inflict. If that is hastened by cross-border raids, artillery barrages and drone strikes we, like Ukraine, should welcome them, rather than, like the hand-wringing Joe Biden, deplore them. At least our Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, has the resolve to make clear his support for Ukraine’s right to defend itself by hitting out against the Russian aggressors beyond its borders.

The New Voice of Ukraine

Ukrainian army destroys Russia’s mainland route to Crimea with blasts in Berdyansk and Melitopol

June 4, 2023

“It’s the southern direction. It is to be considered a possible target of the Ukrainian counteroffensive (as we still don’t know what is going to happen),” he told Radio NV.

The other reason to strike military targets in occupied Zaporizhzya and Kherson oblasts.

“Berdyansk is a port city. As Melitopol and other settlements to the south, it is a part of the so-called Russian mainland route to Crimea which is used alongside the Crimean Bridge for munition supply. They need to hit key points (of the route) in order to destroy it. That is happening now.

“Explosions were heard in the Crimean city and logistical hub of Dzankoy in the northern part of the peninsula.”it’s a railway junction which has been affected before. As it was today during an overnight attack,” Popovych said, explaining that the attack was a part of a Ukrainian campaign in the south.

Ukraine is ready to launch a counter-offensive, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Ukrainian demining units are clearing territories along the contact line in preparation for a counteroffensive, the WSJ wrote.

The demining operations are carried out manually at night to avoid revealing potential positions from which the offensive will be launched.

The former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, general David Petraeus, predicted the Ukrainian counter-offensive to be very powerful with “army-wide effect.”

The New Voice of Ukraine

Ukrainian drone operator dodges Russian TOR-2M missile, then catches up to it — incredible video

June 3, 2023

Namely, three Tor-2M SAMs, a Buk-M1, three Nona self-propelled artillery systems, three infantry fighting vehicles, two tanks, an electronic warfare station, and enemy fortifications were taken out in the attack.

Artillery also destroyed another 84 units of enemy weapons, including seven tanks, six Grads MLRSs, 11 cannons, six self-propelled artillery systems, 21 armored vehicles, and other equipment thanks to the SBU’s adjustments of their fire.

Read also: Soldier and former MP Yehor Firsov on modern reconnaissance, destroying Russian Buk SAM system

Read also: Ukraine destroys Russian Buk air defense system, over 700 soldiers in last 24 hours

The highlight of the attack was the phenomenal reaction of a Ukrainian drone operator who managed to dodge a Russian missile fired at his drone.

“A TOR tried to shoot down our suicide drone. But the pilot saved the drone – he manually diverted it from the missile, and then “captured” the target and caught up with the enemy SAM trying to escape,” the special service wrote.

Read also: Ukrainian defenders strike enemy Buk and Tor air defense systems in last 24 hours

Associated Press

Russia launched ‘largest drone attack’ on Ukrainian capital before Kyiv Day; 1 killed

Susie Blann and Elise Morton – May 28, 2023

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s capital was subjected to the largest drone attack since the start of Russia’s war, local officials said, as Kyiv prepared to mark the anniversary of its founding on Sunday. At least one person was killed, but officials said scores of drones were shot down, demonstrating Ukraine’s air defense capability.

Russia launched the “most massive attack” on the city overnight Saturday with Iranian-made Shahed drones, said Serhii Popko, a senior Kyiv military official. The attack lasted more than five hours, with air defense reportedly shooting down more than 40 drones.

A 41-year-old man was killed and a 35-year-old woman was hospitalized when debris fell on a seven-story nonresidential building and started a fire, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Debris from a drone damaged the building of the Ukrainian Society of the Blind. On Sunday morning, organization member Volodymyr Golubenko came to pick up his things. He was helped by his son Mykola, who searched for his father’s belongings among the rubble and at the same time tried to describe to his father what his office looks like now.

“This wall on the right is destroyed and on left also,” said Mykola to his father.

Volodymyr Golubenko worked at this place for more than 40 years. He says it is a home for many blind people, because they come here to talk and support each other.

“If you don’t even have a job, it’s difficult to get a job now, because these events (war) have been going on since last year. At least people come here to chat,” said Volodymyr.

Like Golubenko, many people in his district heard the sound of Shahed drones for the first time. Among them was 36-year-old Yana, who has three boys. The family hid in a corridor all night.

“Something started to explode above us. The children ran here in fear,” said Yana.

Ukraine’s air force said that Saturday night was also record-breaking in terms of Shahed drone attacks across the country. Of the 54 drones launched, 52 were shot down by air defense systems.

Russia has repeatedly launched waves of drone attacks against Ukraine, but most are shot down. Ukraine has also claimed this month to have downed some of Russia’s hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has touted as providing a key competitive advantage.

In the northeastern Kharkiv province, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said a 61-year-old woman and a 60-year-old man were killed in two separate shelling attacks.

Kyiv Day marks the anniversary of the city’s official founding. The day is usually celebrated with live concerts, street fairs, exhibitions and fireworks. Scaled-back festivities were planned for this year, the city’s 1,541st anniversary.

The timing of the drone attacks was likely not coincidental, Ukrainian officials said.

“The history of Ukraine is a long-standing irritant for the insecure Russians,” Ukraine’s chief presidential aide, Andriy Yermak, said on Telegram.

“Today, the enemy decided to ‘congratulate’ the people of Kyiv on Kyiv Day with the help of their deadly UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles),” Popko also wrote on the messaging app.

Local officials in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region said that air defense systems destroyed several drones as they approached the Ilsky oil refinery.

Russia’s southern Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, also came under attack from Ukrainian forces on Saturday, local officials said. Regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov reported Sunday that a 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy were wounded in the shelling.

Drone attacks against Russian border regions have been a regular occurrence since the start of the invasion in February 2022, with attacks increasing last month. Earlier this month, an oil refinery in Krasnodar was attacked by drones on two straight days.

Ukrainian air defenses, bolstered by sophisticated Western-supplied systems, have been adept at thwarting Russian air attacks — both drones and aircraft missiles.

Earlier in May, Ukraine prevented an intense Russian air attack on Kyiv, shooting down all missiles aimed at the capital. The bombardment, which additionally targeted locations across Ukraine, included six Russian Kinzhal aero-ballistic hypersonic missiles, repeatedly touted by Russian President Vladimir Putin as providing a key strategic competitive advantage and among the most advanced weapons in his country’s arsenal.

Sophisticated Western air defense systems, including American-made Patriot missiles, have helped spare Kyiv from the kind of destruction witnessed along the main front line in Ukraine’s east and south. While most of the ground fighting is stalemated along that front line, both sides are targeting other territory with long-range weapons.

Against the backdrop of Saturday night’s drone attacks, Russia’s ambassador to the U.K., Andrei Kelin, warned of an escalation in Ukraine. He told the BBC on Sunday his country had “enormous resources” and it was yet to “act very seriously,” cautioning that Western supplies of weapons to Ukraine risked escalating the war to a “new dimension.” The length of the conflict, he said, “depends on the efforts in escalation of war that is being undertaken by NATO countries, especially by the U.K.”

Kelin’s comments are typical of Russian officials’ rhetoric with regard to Moscow’s military might, but contradict regular reports from the battlefield of Russian troops being poorly equipped and trained.

Also on Sunday, the death toll from Friday’s missile attack on the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, the regional capital of the Dnipropetrovsk province, rose to four. Regional. Gov. Serhii Lysak said that three people who were considered missing were confirmed dead. There were 32 people, including two children, wounded in the attack, which struck a building containing psychology and veterinary clinics.

Elise Morton reported from London.

The Telegraph

The coming Russian revolution will unleash horrifying new demons

Colonel Richard Kemp – May 25, 2023

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s latest bombast against the Russian MOD and, by inference, the Kremlin itself, should not be seen as just another rant from a blowhard with a track record. His extraordinary threats of internal violence – “mobs with pitchforks” – and even revolution are a stark indicator of just how serious things are getting behind the scenes for Putin’s regime.

Prigozhin was predictably swift to claim credit for his Wagner forces in the capture of Bakhmut, but seemed to place greater emphasis on the cost. He claimed 20,000 of his own men had been killed, which is almost certainly a gross under-estimate, and to that we must add a very large number of Russian army troops. Given that possession of Bakhmut brings Russia no obvious strategic or even tactical gain, Prigozhin’s apocalyptic talk almost echoes the sentiments of King Pyrrhus of Epirus after he defeated the Romans at the Battle of Asculum, that “one other such victory would utterly undo him”.

Bakhmut stands as an allegory of the entire Russian war so far – inflicting huge damage at great cost and to no advantage. If it continues in this vein, Prigozhin’s vision of revolution is not impossible. He spoke of 1917, when soldiers and their families stood up against the Russian government. But you don’t need to go back that far to draw even closer parallels to what is happening today. The war in Afghanistan played a major role in the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Originally conceived as a short-term intervention, like Ukraine, the campaign in fact went on for 10 years and cost more than 15,000 Soviet lives. Defeat at the hands of US-armed mujahideen fighters humiliated and discredited the Soviet army, vitiating the glue that was so essential in holding the country together. Loss of perception of military invincibility emboldened dissidents including disaffected war veterans and their families, especially in the non-Russian republics which provided a disproportionate quantity of the fighting troops – and the casualties.

Afghanistan also undermined the confidence of Soviet leaders to rely on the army to quell rebellion. Anti-war feeling grew among the population as the conflict ground on and casualties built up, causing a fundamental shift in the hitherto compliant media, which began to publish non-approved news stories about what was going on in the war and at home.

All of these effects are more acute today, with vastly greater casualties in a much shorter time, inflicted on a significantly smaller population. And in an era where the internet and social media throws military ineptitude under a much more intense spotlight than was ever imaginable back in the days of Afghanistan.

The impact of a catastrophically failing war could perhaps be weathered better in a country with greater structural resilience. But the Russian Federation is hyper-fragile, with its energy dependent economy ruptured by sanctions, rampant corruption increasingly resented by a population with limited prospects of prosperity further diminished by war, growing ethnic resentments among non-Russian populations who have paid the highest price in the fighting, and a political system totally dependent on Putin’s cult of personality that has now been harshly exposed as damaged goods.

If this war does lead to fundamental change in the Russian Federation it is likely to follow a much rockier road than the break-up of the Soviet Union. One thing we should not expect to see is an emergent regime that wants to end the war, usher in a new democracy and establish cordial relations with the West.

Don’t expect another Mikhail Gorbachev. Instead, we could well be looking at a protracted scenario of chaos, violence, rebellion and repression, with fighting between the Russian army, national guard, security services, the plethora of private armies and perhaps Prighozin’s vision of mobs on the streets with pitchforks. Even if it doesn’t collapse into ethnic fiefdoms, it will be fought over by competing hardliners incensed by the betrayal of their forces by a corrupt elite.

None of this might happen of course, but we should remember that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was unexpected both in scale and speed; it was too big to fail. If, however, something like it does come to pass, the fall of the Russian Federation might diminish the present threat it presents to European and global security.

But this time, let’s not hear any talk of “peace dividends”, because we can be certain of one thing – Russia will rebuild itself and once again come out fighting.

Colonel Richard Kemp is a former British Army officer. He was an infantry battalion commander and saw active duty in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan

CBS News

Wagner boss, “Putin’s butcher,” warns Russia could face new revolution

CBSNews – May 25, 2023

The man in charge of Russia’s notorious Wagner Group private mercenary army, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has warned that Russia could face a “revolution” and lose its war in Ukraine unless the country’s “elites” fully commit to the fight and put the country “into North Korea mode,” with martial law imposed, to achieve results on the front lines.

In a lengthy video interview with a pro-war, pro-Kremlin blogger, Prigozhin lashed out against Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his daughter Ksenia, a sports executive whose New Year wartime vacation in Dubai drew ire from the Russian public.

Russia at risk of a pitchfork “revolution”

“The children of elites… allow themselves to lead a public, fat, carefree life,” Prigozhin fumed, “while the children of others arrive back shredded to pieces in zinc coffins.”

“This duality may end like it did in 1917, with a revolution, when first the soldiers rise up, and after that their loved ones do,” he warned, referring to the Russian Revolution that toppled the country’s monarchy more than a century ago. Prigozhin said Russian citizens could raid the elites’ homes with “pitchforks… and don’t think there are hundreds of them, now there are now tens of thousands of relatives of those killed, and there will probably be hundreds of thousands.”

It was hardly the first time Prigozhin has criticized the country’s top brass or its political and business elite, whom he considers incompetent and has even accused of treason for having foreign property and sending their children abroad, but the interview stood out for the harshness of his critique of the strategic blunders by Russian military forces in their flagging war in Ukraine.

“Prepare for a hard war”

“We stormed in an aggressive manner and stomped our boots all over Ukraine while looking for Nazis,” Prigozhin said. “We approached Kyiv, s**t our pants, and retreated. Next onto Kherson, where we also s**t our pants and retreated, and nothing seems to be working out for us.”

He said the vague goals stated by his long-time associate President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials at the beginning of the war, as aiming to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine, had failed.

Prigozhin avoided criticizing Putin himself. He even reaffirmed his devotion to the Russian leader, the war in Ukraine and the Russian motherland, blaming Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov for a poorly organized chain of command and corruption that left the Russian Armed Forces unprepared for Ukraine’s fierce, Western-backed resistance.

Prigozhin, who grew rich on government catering contracts and has since branched out, as CBS News’ own investigation has found, to bankroll his private army through a vast and brutal international criminal enterprise, offered two potential scenarios of how he believed the war in Ukraine may pan out for Russia:

“There are optimistic and pessimistic scenarios. The optimistic one, which I don’t really believe in, is that Europe and America will get tired of the Ukrainian conflict, then China will put everyone at the negotiating table,” he said. “We will agree that everything that we have already seized is ours, and everything that has not been seized is not ours. It is unlikely that this scenario is possible.”

Instead, Prigozhin said, Ukraine could get more Western weapons and ramp up its long-expected counteroffensive, which “may succeed in some places.”

“They will try to restore their 2014 borders, and this could easily happen; they will attack Crimea, they will try to blow up the Crimean bridge, cut off the supply lines, and for us, this scenario won’t be good, so we need to prepare for a hard war,” he continued.

“We are in such a condition that we could f***ing lose Russia, which is the main problem… We need to impose martial law,” Prigozhin concluded.

Prigozhin offers Wagner Group death toll

The Wagner chief gave his first estimates on the levels of casualties among his company’s mercenaries, saying he had recruited 50,000 convicts from Russian prisons during the war, 20% of whom had died, along with 10,000 other forces who were hired on contract.

The White House said in early May that around 10,000 Wagner fighters had been killed around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the bloodiest battle of the war so far, since December alone.

It’s impossible to verify either the U.S. estimate or Prigozhin’s own figure, which is double, but spans the entire 15 months of the war.

Russia’s Defense Ministry hasn’t released casualty figures since September, when it said only around 6,000 regular soldiers had died in the war — a significant undercount according to Western intelligence and military experts.

“Putin’s butcher”

For the first time, Prigozhin also commented on his nickname, “Putin’s chef,” given to him by Russian investigative journalists after they uncovered his vast government catering contracts.

“I have never been a chef; I used to be a restaurateur and quite successful. I can’t cook myself. They should have just come up with ‘Putin’s butcher’ instead,” Prigozhin quipped in an apparent reference to the brutal tactics his mercenary army has now deployed from Ukraine to central Africa.

Prigozhin’s ability to spew bitter criticism at senior Russian officials with seeming impunity, which is then amplified by cohorts of influential pro-war bloggers on Russian Telegram channels, has puzzled many Russia-watchers. Similar comments, even tamer ones, have landed dozens of political dissidents and others in prison under strict laws passed by Russia’s rubber-stamp parliament at the onset of the Ukraine invasion to silence opposing voices.

But Prigozhin and his mercenaries have claimed some front-line successes — largely by throwing waves of ill-prepared and ill-equipped convicts into battle as cannon-fodder, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.

Those limited successes, after months of embarrassing routs suffered by the regular military, prompted Putin to recently congratulate both Wagner and the army for taking control of Bakhmut, though Ukraine still insists the city is being fought over.

Many have taken Putin’s praise as confirmation that, despite his public antics, Prigozhin still carries high-up approval for his dedication to Russia’s war.

“I love my homeland. I obey Putin. To hell with Shoigu,” Prigozhin said in his latest rant. “We will continue to fight.”