(MENAFN- Asia Times) Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and nine other Wagner Group members are dead and gone, victims of a mysteriair crash with only theories as to what happened.
But even if the circumstances of Prigozhin's death are yet unknown, it is becoming clear that President Vladimir Putin intends to continue the use of non-government military forces to perform sometimes violent foreign policy chores.
The only question for the Russian leader is how to keep Wagner successors both useful and under control.
There's no indication that the apparent rift between Prighozhin and Putin that preceded the air crash will result in the disbanding of either Wagner or other similar, if much smaller, paramilitary organizations.
Known as private military companies, or PMCs, the units have become key instruments of Moscow's four-decade effort to establish Russia as a feared and present global actor.
Rather than dissolution, a Wagner revamp is in order. Putin is treating the Prigozhin affair as simply a management problem of an errant franchise operation.
When he offered condolences to the families of Prigozhin and his dead lieutenants, Putin simply described the Wagner leader as“a talented businessman”
who made some“serimistakes.”
That description belies a long evolution rooted in a campaign by Russian intelligence services to restore Moscow's global influence. Giving up on that effort is apparently unthinkable, observers say.
Putin and Prigozhin at the latter's food processing plant during happier times. Photo: Asia Times files
“Parts (of Wagner) may be folded in under command of the Ministry of Defense, Russian intelligence or to other oligarchs and leaders found more compliant,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a Russia intelligence expert at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security.“But none of those assets will wither at the vine.”
Putin has already said that all Wagner“volunteer units” should sign new contracts with other paramilitary organizations, of which there appear to be plenty.
Molfar, a Ukrainian intelligence company, has tracked 37 non-Wagner mercenary contractors operating in 19 African countries and 10 in Asia and the Middle East. Like Wagner, these groups provide training, arms and even combat forces to an array of governments and shadowy clients.
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