Wagner Group mutiny shakes Putin’s image of invincibility

Instability in Russia: Is Putin’s grip on power loosening?

Lesson summary

Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English. Here at Plain English, we use current events and trending topics to help you upgrade your English. There are two halves to each audio lesson. We start with a story about something in the news, some trending topic. And in the second half, we show you how to use an English expression.

Today is lesson 590. The story is about what happened in Russia with the Wagner Group. A private army started—and then stopped—an internal mutiny against the Russian military. Trucks were rolling down the highway toward Moscow when the whole thing was called off . That’s the main story—and the expression I’ll teach you today is “overplay your hand.” Overplay your hand; that’s a good one. That’s coming up in the second half of the audio.

Now if you want to do more than just listen, we have you covered there, too. There’s a lot more about this topic, a lot more about English you can learn today, July 17, or whatever day you’re listening. You can find that at PlainEnglish.com/590. And that, by the way, includes a free transcript of the audio.

JR is the producer. He’s the one that makes sure all those great resources are available to you at PlainEnglish.com/590.

I think we’re ready to jump into today’s story. Here we go.

Wagner Group starts (and then stops) mutiny in Russia

One hallmark of Vladimir Putin’s leadership style—if you can call it that—is to create rivalries among the people below him. If everyone feels threatened all of the time, then nobody can amass enough power or gain enough confidence to depose the leader.

The Wagner Group is—was?—a private army. To most people in stable, peaceful countries, this sounds weird: only the government has war-making abilities. But years ago, Putin decided he wanted an army outside the regular chain of command.

So he turned to the Wagner Group, a privately-owned paramilitary organization. The details were kept hidden, but the group was supposedly co-founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin spent years in a Soviet prison. When he got out, he started a catering business, which later became the company that served the Russian president meals at state dinners.

Having a private army did two things for Putin. First, he could send this army to fight in places like Africa—and Putin could deny that he was the one who sent them there. The army could do his dirty work around the world, and Putin could escape official blame.

The other thing it did is it served as a constant, low-level rival to Russia’s official defense ministry. Nobody in the defense ministry could feel truly safe in their jobs, knowing their boss also commanded a separate, off-the-books army.

For years, the Wagner Group was a secret. Prigozhin denied he was involved in any army. The Russian government denied the Wagner Group existed. Private armies are, notionally, illegal in Russia.

But then Russia launched its war against Ukraine . To prosecute the war, Putin needed more than just the soldiers in the regular army. So he sent the Wagner Group to fight in Ukraine, too. The Russian government paid Wagner Group for its wartime services.

That’s when Prigozhin came out of the shadows and openly acknowledged that he was the leader of this private army. And the Wagner Group had success in Ukraine. Defense analysts say that the whole Russian army failed to make any territorial gains in the last year of the war—but the Wagner Group was responsible for taking Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine. In other words, in the last year, the only reason Russia made any gains in Ukraine is due to the Wagner Group, this private army.

The Wagner Group recruited private soldiers by offering them high salaries. They also went to Russian prisons and, with Putin’s blessing, offered prisoners clemency in exchange for military service.

But all was not well behind the scenes. The Russian army came to resent the Wagner Group’s forces. And the Wagner Group thought the Russian generals in charge of the war effort were doing a bad job. The Wagner Group did find some territorial success in Ukraine. But it suffered immense casualties.

Prigozhin spoke openly and critically against officials high, high up in the chain of command. He said it was a mistake to invade Ukraine and, once there, he said that Russia had botched the war effort.

Ordinary Russians can go to jail for even calling the war a war. But Prigozhin seemed to have free reign to criticize the highest officials in his signature style—in other words, in vicious, expletive-filled attacks.

Russia’s defense ministry decided that enough was enough. They ordered all Wagner Group soldiers to sign on with them, and to join the official armed forces, by July 1, 2023. That action effectively would shut down the Wagner Group and leave Prigozhin without an army.

What happened next shook the world. On Friday night, June 23, Prigozhin announced a “march for justice.” He took his forces fighting in Ukraine and turned them around. They marched into the Russian city of Rostov, a city of about a million people. Rostov plays an important role in supplying the war effort and it hosts important defense ministry offices: Wagner forces seized it from the Russian military. For them, it was easy. The locals in Rostov cheered them. The official Russian forces put up little resistance.

Putin wasn’t happy. He went on television and called the move traitorous. He said it was a knife in the back of the Russian people. It looked like Prigozhin had overplayed his hand . He had gone too far. Now he had not only lost Putin’s support, but he made himself a target of the Russian state.

Then, Prigozhin made a stunning move: he doubled down. He said he would move his troops to Moscow, but he didn’t say what they’d do when they got there. Prigozhin, the leader of a private army, sent a column of trucks and fighting equipment on the highway from Rostov to Moscow, the capital. They covered over 1,000 kilometers of Russian territory with little resistance. They almost got to Moscow, and then they stopped, just 200 kilometers from the capital.

During the day Saturday, Prigozhin and Putin reached a deal. The details are murky. But the story goes like this. Alexander Lukashenko, the president—some say dictator —of neighboring Belarus brokered a peace deal. Prigozhin would stop his insurrection and turn his troops around. In exchange , Russia would not pursue charges against Prigozhin, but he would have to leave Russia. He would go live in Belarus.

The crisis was over almost as fast as it started: the whole thing lasted less than 36 hours. For a tense day, there seemed to be a real possibility of a coup or even a civil war in Russia.

Prigozhin appeared to have kept his word and left Russia: he was seen in Belarus. But just last week, questions surfaced about whether he had stayed there or gone back to Russia. Russia has given former Wagner Group soldiers the option to sign with the Russian army, follow Prigozhin to Belarus, or simply go home. It appears that Putin has survived the gravest challenge yet to his 23-year rule.

But the consensus is that he is deeply weakened. Somehow, he let a private army march 1,000 kilometers through his country, almost to the capital. What was the real Russian military doing that whole time? How did a private army do that so easily? Is Russia’s military really that weak? Or did Prigozhin have supporters high up in the Russian defense ministry?

Flight trackers showed Putin’s presidential planes leaving Moscow during the chaos on Saturday, though the government said Putin remained in the Kremlin. Putin’s image as the strongman, as a leader, as the one in charge—that has been seriously weakened.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the end is near. Leaders can use a brutal combination of repression, violence, and deprivation to stay in power long after they have been weakened and lost the support of the public: just look at Nicolas Maduro . But it does look like Putin’s image in Russia will never be the same.

Can’t they both lose?

If you were rooting for Prigozhin to take down Putin…be careful what you wish for. Prigozhin is no humanitarian. His preferred way of executing soldiers is to crush their heads with a sledgehammer.

Meanwhile, Lukashenko clearly enjoyed his time in the spotlight. He’s been seen as Putin’s errand boy for so long—now he got to play the hero statesman, supposedly saving Putin from a potential mutiny or worse. Lukashenko said he’s looking forward to learning all kinds of positive lessons from having Prigozhin in his country.

Or not. Last week, Lukashenko said that Prigozhin had already left Belarus, and there was open speculation about whether he had gone back to Russia or not. This story may yet have another chapter.