Mercenary chief rises with push in eastern Ukraine — and clashes with Russia’s military leaders

KYIV, Ukraine — The head of a Russian mercenary group is emerging from the shadows to challenge Moscow’s ruling establishment, using battlefield success in Ukraine to burnish his credentials as a new face of the war.

Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed victory for his Wagner group of military contractors in the salt mining town of Soledar on Wednesday, in what would amount to the Kremlin’s first battlefield success for months after a string of embarrassing setbacks.

The Ukrainian government said its soldiers were still holding out under a fierce onslaught after a monthslong battle on the eastern front lines, however, while Russia’s defense ministry appeared to contradict Prigozhin — the latest hint of growing discord at the top of Moscow’s war effort.

NBC News was not able to verify any of the claims. 

Capturing Soledar may not prove decisive in the course of the war, but could offer Prigozhin a launching pad for his own personal campaign that appeared increasingly at odds with the military leadership in the Kremlin. 

While the mercenary boss was claiming victory, the defense ministry announced another shake-up at the top of its “special military operation,” replacing its overall commander in Ukraine after just 3 months in charge.

The new role for Gen. Valery Gerasimov and demotion of Gen. Sergei Surovikin could reflect a desire to squash Prigozhin’s ambitions, some analysts said. Prigozhin has accused Gerasimov, Russia’s top military officer, of incompetence.

“This reasserts the MoD’s position overseeing the war,” Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank, said on Twitter. “This may also partially be a response to Wagner’s increasingly influential and public role in the war,” he added.

On Wednesday, Prigozhin posted a photo of himself among soldiers at what he said was a mine in Soledar, which along with the nearby city of Bakhmut has been devastated by some of the most intense fighting since Russia’s invasion last year.

“The units of the Wagner PMCs took control of the entire territory of Soledar … I want to emphasize once again that no units participated in the assault on Soledar except the fighters of the Wagner PMCs,” said a statement attributed to Prigozhin posted on a Wagner-linked Telegram messaging channel. 

NBC News has not been able to confirm where the photo was taken.

By contrast, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov neither confirmed that Soledar had fallen to Russian forces or mentioned the Wagner group’s involvement in attempts to take it. 

“Let’s not rush and wait for official statements,” he said. 

Russia’s defense ministry said that its “Airborne troops blockaded Soledar from the northern and southern parts of the city” but added that “assault squads are fighting in the city.”

Prigozhin’s post — and his emphasis on his own troops’ success — comes amid a flurry of online statements, photos and videos in recent weeks that analysts said constituted a brazen campaign of self promotion and open antagonism toward the military leaders behind a war that has been faltering badly since the invasion in February.

Once known as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “chef” for catering state events, Prigozhin, 61, long publicly denied leading the Wagner group, a private military company that has also operated in countries including Syria, Mali and the Central African Republic. Russia has consistently denied the involvement of the Wagner Group in its official military operations.

But he has embraced the public eye during the conflict in Ukraine, where his fighters are leading the charge against Kyiv’s troops in the eastern Donetsk region at massive human cost.

Private military companies are technically illegal in Russia, but in November Wagner opened offices in St Petersburg emblazoned with the group’s logo.

Prigozhin has donned military fatigues and appeared in videos apparently showing him recruiting prisoners or in the thick of the action at the front line, in contrast to the city-dwelling elites he derides in some of his posts.

He has openly criticized Russian military top brass, and a Wagner-linked social media channel shared a rant by two men who claimed to be Russian soldiers criticizing army chiefs amid reports of low morale and organizational disarray, with Prigozhin subsequently vowing to “make them (the military) solve” the problems on the frontline in an audio post.

Such tactics are highly unusual in a top-down political system where dissenters are routinely imprisoned and even poisoned or found after mysteriously falling from hotel windows and balconies.

With the Kremlin’s military campaign in Ukraine largely stalled and Putin up for re-election in 2024, some experts say the time may be right for a power play.

Tatiana Stanovaya, Russia expert at the Washington.-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, wrote of a looming tussle between pragmatists wishing to de-escalate the conflict, and hawks who want to double down and radically restructure Russia’s political system.

“Their struggle for supremacy is set to be one of 2023’s key political fights, and one that hinges largely on events on the battlefield: the worse Russia performs militarily, the more vicious the pragmatists’ battle with the hawks,” she wrote in a research note published on Monday.

“The hawks will take the offensive, targeting the military brass and politicians,” she added.

To date, the hawks have been far louder than the pragmatists, and a chorus of hard-right bloggers have excoriated Russia’s military performance, while television pundits have called for a tougher approach.

Prigozhin has fostered a tough image online — appearing with a sledgehammer in one video and, according to Reuters, commenting in approval of another that showed an accused deserter being executed with a sledgehammer with a sledgehammer.

In a Jan. 1 video, Prigozhin is shown appearing to inspect a pile of bodies described in the clip as Wagner fighters in black bags in a makeshift morgue, saying: “Their contract is over, they can go home.”

Ukrainian officials accuse Prigozhin of using his mercenaries as cannon fodder, throwing them into the fight to wear down Kyiv’s defenses and secure a high-profile victory no matter the human cost. 

After months of fighting, that strategy may have just secured its first battlefield breakthrough — and a Kremlin response.