The Business Press – June 27, 2023 at 10:08PM
In the wake of a tumultuous weekend that saw Russian President Vladimir Putin survive the biggest test to his leadership in 23 years, the disbandment of the mutinous Wagner Group appears to now be underway, the BBC reported.
Russia’s defense ministry has said that the Wagner Group will surrender its supply of weapons and hardware, and its fighters have been invited by Putin to join the Russian army instead. Failing that, mercenaries can flee to neighboring Belarus, which has been involved in mediating an agreement between the two parties since Wagner’s rebellion on Saturday.
The mercenary group seized control of key military sites in Rostov-on-Don during an armed event that saw at least 13 pilots killed.
The long run effects of disbanding Wagner Group could undercut Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine because the group is able to operate independently from the Russian state and its chain of command is structured quite differently from the traditional Russian military. Putin may try to compensate for any loss of Wagner forces by adding additional Chechen soldiers or finding other ways to integrate new forces. But Russian forces are still likely to suffer a setback in the long run from the loss of the highly mobile Wagner fighters.
Overall, the disbandment of the Wagner Group could be seen as a victory for Ukraine, which has begun its long-awaited spring counteroffensive. Ukrainian forces have liberated up to 50 square miles of territory along the southern frontline from Russia since the start of the latest counteroffensive, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar said on Monday.
The Ukraine Ministry of Defense tweeted on Tuesday morning that it was highly likely that it had recaptured some of the territory that had been occupied by Russia since 2014. Ukraine is looking at the events in Russia with quite a bit of glee, wrote Mayeni Jones for the BBC. Over the weekend, President Zelensky basically said that Russia was getting its just deserts for invading Ukraine and that everything happening to Putin was as a direct result of all of his decision to invade Ukrainian territory.
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