People misunderstand Wagner’s role in the Ukrainian war.
Wagner is a prison to meat-grinder operation. Convicts were recruited, given a bit of training and sent on the most dangerous attacks. This meant that regular Russian troops were not expended, and that less civilians had to be drafted or recruited.
When Prigozhin complains about mistreatment, he’s probably right. To the Russian military, Wagner are useful, but scum. Remember that Prigozhin himself is an ex-convict, and he was sent to prison for theft, which included in one case choking a woman nearly to death.
Using convicts may have saved Russian troops, but convicts in the military never ends well. The same thing was done, without the mercenary cutout, in Afghanistan by the Russians and it did great damage to the Russian military.
Prigozhin, though I have no sympathy for him, is refusing to send more convicts into the meat grinder for Putin, or perhaps he’s running low on convicts and would now have to use his more valuable troops.
Which leads us to the counter-offensive. It’s going badly. So far, very badly. The equipment NATO gives Ukraine and even the training is all very nice, but NATO militaries are built around the assumption of air superiority or supremacy, and they don’t have that. This makes Ukrainian columns (and they keep attacking in columns, which seems unwise) very vulnerable to Russia air and artillery.
I’ve heard some people say the heavy brigades have yet to be committed, so we’ll see what happens. But I’d be surprised in the counter-offensive really changes the picture of the war. So far the Russians are betting they can win a war of attrition, especially if the attrition is born more by Ukrainians and Russian convicts than by Russian troops, and so far, that seems to be true.
This is especially the case as NATO equipment stores have been drawn down to the point where most NATO countries are leery of sending large amounts of equipment to Ukraine because it would leave the cupboards completely bare.
The war would already be over if there hadn’t been massive NATO supply and command and control, but Ukraine has lost a lot of men and I don’t see how NATO can keep up the resupply. Russia’s seems to have some supply issues, but it looks to me like Ukraine’s are more serious.
We’ll see how it plays out.
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