Sign of despair? Sign of malfunction?
Since the beginning of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the northeast and south of the country and the significant retreat of the Kremlin forces, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, seems to be counting more than ever on mercenaries and paramilitary militias in order to pursue its aggression against Ukraine and above all to maintain its positions there.
This is at least what the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), an American group for analysis and reflection on war, underlines in its most recent report, mentioning in passing the “circumvention” by man Kremlin fort of the “Russian higher military command and the leadership of the Ministry of Defense”, “especially after the defeat around the Kharkiv oblast”, celebrated by Kyiv last week.
A predictable trajectory in a war which, since its first measures last February, does not seem to be going as planned for Vladimir Putin, and which also confirms the “terrorist” nature of this invasion. The populations, exposed to these “ill-prepared” militiamen and sometimes recruited among criminals imprisoned in Russia, still risk paying the price.
Recruitment in prisons
“This is one more sign that Russia is losing the war in Ukraine, comments in an interview with the To have to Sean McFate, a member of the Atlantic Council think tank and a specialist in defense and geostrategy at Georgetown University. Since last March and the failure of the blitzkrieg, Moscow has entered into an unconventional war of massacring civilians and razing cities, as it did in Grozny [en Tchétchénie]Aleppo [en Syrie] and Mariupol [au sud de l’Ukraine]. It’s a terrorist strategy, based on a policy of intimidation and collateral damage, and mercenaries are perfect for this mission because they don’t care about war. All they want is their salary. »
Recruitment of mercenaries seems to be in full swing in Russia, as evidenced by a video that emerged last week in which a man, resembling Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Putin close friend and oligarch at the head of the paramilitary group Wagner, the pay of the Kremlin, seeks to convince prisoners of a penal colony to engage in the conflict in Ukraine. The document circulated massively on Russian social networks, suggesting a “leak” orchestrated by the power in place to promote a mobilization campaign that the results of the offensive on the ground seem to complicate.
Last Thursday, the staff of the Ukrainian army indicated that nearly 350 Russian soldiers had fallen in combat each day during the last counter-offensive launched to retake the Kharkiv region. A record number since the beginning of the conflict. kyiv estimates that more than 53,000 the total number of Russian soldiers died in this war of invasion, in nearly seven months.
The Kremlin speaks for its part of less than 8000 dead in its ranks, even if a recent document leakfrom the Russian Ministry of Finance and summarizing the compensation paid to the families of soldiers who fell on the battlefield, makes it possible to establish the human toll of this war on the Russian side at nearly 48,000.
“The Wagner group is struggling more and more to fill its ranks and has no other choice but to empty Russian prisons to find these mercenaries,” says Sean McFate. In the video, Yevgeny Prigojine, nicknamed “Putin’s cook”, promises the men a presidential pardon in exchange for a six-month service in Ukraine. All for a salary of 100,000 rubles, approximately $2,000 Canadian per month.
Human rights violations?
According to the ISW, the “formation of such units risks leading to new tensions, inequalities and a general lack of cohesion between the Russian forces” on the ground, while presenting Ukrainian military personnel and civilians with “problems of behavior among recruited prisoners, due to the likely prevalence of those convicted of violent crimes, drug trafficking and rape,” it read.
“The use of cheap mercenaries certainly increases the possibility of human rights violations on the ground, adds Sean McFate, due to poor discipline, poor training and a lack of accountability of these soldiers. »
Faced with resistance and the Ukrainian counter-offensive, the Kremlin sought on Tuesday to seal the fate of the conquered territories more quickly, by announcing the urgent holding of annexation referendums in the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, in the east, but also from Kherson in the south, from September 23 to 27. The gesture was described as Russian “blackmail” motivated by “fear of defeat” by the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Andriï Yermak. He promised that this threat would be “liquidated”, reports Agence France-Presse.
These polls will be organized by the self-proclaimed separatist authorities at Putin’s boot and follow the same framework as that which formalized the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea by Russia in 2014. The international community had condemned this “consultation”.
Things are not going well for Vladimir Putin, who is facing increasingly strong protest in Russia and less and less deaf calls for his departure. “This is probably the lowest point of his political career,” believes Sean McFate.
In a sign of this growing discontent, Alla Pugacheva, 73, a Russian icon of post-Soviet popular song, on Sunday called for an end to the war in Ukraine in an Instagram post that did not go unnoticed. She demanded “an end to the death of our boys for illusory purposes” and denounced a conflict which has made “our country a pariah” while weighing down “the lives of our fellow citizens”, can we read.