RFK Jr. The Defender - Putins Wagner Crisis with Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty and served on General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War from 1991 to 1998. He served as the Chief weapons inspector with the United Nation and Iraq, and currently writes on issues pertaining to international security, military affairs, and arms control and non-proliferation. He is the author of Disarmament in the Times of Perestroika, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, and The End of the USSR. Scott Ritter has been an extraordinary source of courage throughout his career. He's been a courageous truth-teller throughout his military career, and he's been one of the most courageous people I've ever met in my life. In this episode, Scott talks about the rise of the Wagner Group in Russia, and why it's important to know exactly what's going on with the group and why they're not allowed to serve as Russian military contractors in Russia. He also talks about how the situation in Ukraine has changed since the invasion of the Donbass and the recent referendum in Donbass, and how that might impact the future of the group's role in Russia and the future in Ukraine. The Wagner Group is a Russian military contractor, but they have no legal status under the Russian Federation s constitution, which does not allow for private military contractors to serve on the battlefield. There's nothing in Russian law that permits them to do so, and there's nothing Russian law allows them to take part of the battlefield as a private military contractor. That's a problem, and that doesn't allow them to be a part of Russia's military service, because they aren't allowed to be considered a Russian service but they can do so because they don't have a formal military service. that's not allowed by the Russian constitution, so they can't be a Russian and they don t have any legal status which is not allowed in the Russian law, which means they aren t allowed to do anything that comes with that . not even a except to do in Russia's or to do any military service in Russia at least not unless they do it as a Russian soldier even though they are not a Russian soldier . and is not a Russian citizen so can they ?

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:01.000 Welcome to the show.

00:00:02.000 I wanted to do this quick show with Scott Ritter on the breaking news about the Wagner Group in Russia to help our listeners understand exactly what's going on.

00:00:14.000 Of course, you all know Scott Ritter.

00:00:16.000 Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer.

00:00:19.000 He is the author of Disarmament in the Times of Perestroika, Arms Control, and And the end of the Soviet Union.

00:00:26.000 He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty.

00:00:31.000 He served on General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War from 1991 to 1998.

00:00:38.000 He served as the chief weapons inspector With the United Nations and Iraq, Mr.

00:00:43.000 Ritters currently writes on issues pertaining to international security, military affairs, Russia and the Mideast, as well as arms control and nonproliferation.

00:00:51.000 He's been an extraordinary source of courageous truth throughout his career.

00:00:57.000 And I'm very happy to have you back on the show, Scott.

00:01:00.000 Well, thank you very much for having me.

00:01:02.000 So let's start with a little history.

00:01:05.000 The Wagner Group was actually, it was started by Russia as a private contractor in order to be able to give military assistance to African nations, etc., in compliance with the Russian Constitution, in compliance with the Russian Constitution, which prohibits Russian soldiers from serving anywhere else in the world.

00:01:30.000 Without the approval of the Russian Federation.

00:01:33.000 I mean, I wish we had this kind of a law, but will you explain that?

00:01:37.000 Sure.

00:01:39.000 The Wagner Group came into being in 2014 as a private military contractor.

00:01:46.000 It was the brainchild of a fusion between Russian military intelligence, the GRU, and some retired veterans who saw an opportunity to use their skill set in a manner that wasn't linked to the bureaucracy of the Ministry of Defense.

00:02:03.000 In 2014, you know, there was the Maidan revolution in Kiev that led to a conflict between the Ukrainian government and ethnic Russians in the Donbass.

00:02:13.000 The Russian government wanted to throw its weight behind the ethnic Russians, but was prohibited from sending active duty military forces to Donbass by the constitution.

00:02:24.000 Wagner became a vehicle through which the Russian government could provide military experts who could train, who could equip, who could operate technical equipment on behalf of the Russian separatists.

00:02:36.000 They served there from 2014 up until 2022 in that capacity.

00:02:42.000 In February of 2022, Vladimir Putin initiated the special military operation, the invasion of Ukraine, and Wagner's role expanded.

00:02:53.000 They became a combatant unit.

00:02:55.000 They grew in size.

00:02:57.000 Some people say between 30,000 and 50,000 Wagner contractors served under the umbrella of the Wagner Group.

00:03:05.000 They were given some of the most difficult military assignments.

00:03:08.000 I mean, say what you want about Wagner, I think the United States government has classified them as a criminal organization for what they do in Africa, etc.

00:03:16.000 But in the Donbass, let's be clear, they are some of the most professional and effective military combatants out there.

00:03:23.000 They've achieved tremendous success in very difficult circumstances in urban fighting against the Ukrainian forces.

00:03:30.000 And they developed a well-deserved reputation within Russia of being sort of these heroic patriots, which is all fine and dandy, except there's a problem, the legal status of Wagner.

00:03:42.000 See, Wagner could serve as a private military contractor so long as the territory they fought on was not considered to be Russian.

00:03:48.000 But after the referendum in September and October of last year, the territories that Wagner served on in Lugansk and Donetsk now became Russian territory.

00:04:00.000 Just hold on a second there to explain that.

00:04:03.000 There was a referendum in the Donbass in which Donbass voted 90 to 10 to join Russia.

00:04:10.000 And Russia actually, at that point, changed its constitution.

00:04:14.000 And this was after the invasion already started.

00:04:17.000 And Russia initially had rejected Russia.

00:04:20.000 incorporating the Donbass into Russia.

00:04:22.000 But once the invasion started, and in the view of Russia, Ukraine was being intractable.

00:04:29.000 At that point, they changed the constitution in Russia to make Donbass part of Russia.

00:04:36.000 Right.

00:04:37.000 Donbass and also the territories of Kherson and Zaporizhia, two other oblasts that serve as a land bridge between mainland Russia and Crimea.

00:04:46.000 So now that this territory became legally part of Russia, from the Russian perspective, that's all we're talking about.

00:04:53.000 Understand that Europe, the United States, and other nations don't You know, haven't recognized this, but Russia is a nation of laws, and from a Russian legal perspective, Wagner now had no legitimate status, because Russian law does not allow for private military contractors.

00:05:12.000 There's nothing in Russian law that permits this, and the Wagner fighters, as heroic as they are, they now lack any legal status.

00:05:19.000 The Wagner command element took pride in the fact that they weren't the Ministry of Defense.

00:05:25.000 One of the reasons they were so effective is that they weren't encumbered by the bureaucracy that comes with regular military service.

00:05:34.000 They had very experienced commanders who could take Rapid decisions translate that into tactical actions on the battlefield, and this is what gave them the advantage.

00:05:44.000 But now, in order to stay able to fight, they had to transition to the Ministry of Defense, which means that the fighters and the organization would have to sign contracts And stop being a private military contractor.

00:06:00.000 People like Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Commander's Council, the experienced leaders of Wagner, took umbrage at this.

00:06:07.000 They said they don't want that.

00:06:08.000 And it became sort of a, it turned into a war of insults, so to speak, where in order to justify not wanting to be part of the Ministry of Defense, Prigozhin started to insult the Minister of Defense and the chairman of the general staff, General Prigozhin started to insult the Minister of Defense and the chairman And this became a very vitriolic, internet-based campaign.

00:06:32.000 Let me just interrupt for a second, just to make you backtrack, because you know so much about this.

00:06:38.000 Prigozhin is the figurehead chief or director of Wagner.

00:06:44.000 The true power of Wagner is in the hands of the four members of that command council.

00:06:52.000 Those four who were very secretive originally, but now people know who they are.

00:07:00.000 And they are four of the leading most decorated members of the Russian military from various campaigns.

00:07:09.000 So they're high level, I guess general or colonel level, but they've received extensive military decorations for heroism, etc.

00:07:19.000 And they were, as I said, they were super secretive at one point, but now people know who they are.

00:07:24.000 Those are the real commanders of Wagner.

00:07:27.000 Correct.

00:07:28.000 And they themselves often have issues with the leadership of the Ministry of Defense.

00:07:32.000 So one of the more notable members of this command council has just published a book, in fact, about his experiences in Syria, where he is scathing about the Ministry of Defense and about the bureaucracy and the incompetence and the corruption of the Russian military.

00:07:49.000 So it's not as though these people don't agree with Purgosian, but I think it's important that people understand that Evgeny Purgosian is not a military man.

00:07:57.000 He doesn't make any military decisions.

00:07:59.000 He's involved in the management of Wagner, and he plays a very important role as serving as the public face of Wagner.

00:08:07.000 But the decisions made about actual combat on the ground are made by the commander's council.

00:08:13.000 And it's just as you described, these very experienced veteran soldiers decorated for heroism.

00:08:19.000 Nobody can doubt that they know what they're talking about when it comes time to war.

00:08:23.000 Now, they recognize that if they were compelled to sign these contracts, that the character of Wagner would be over, that Wagner would no longer exist as what they wanted it to be, etc.

00:08:36.000 For whatever reason, they made a decision to take this to the next level, to go from simply rhetoric to actually carrying out what was an armed insurrection.

00:08:45.000 Now, I will tell you as a former intelligence officer who has experience in these things, Purgosian exhibited all the red flags one would normally associate with somebody who is susceptible to being recruited.

00:08:57.000 Instability, greed, financial problems, and his actions are so closely mirrored what the Ukrainian intelligence services and the Western intelligence service would want from somebody that I believe that eventually they're going to show that he was influenced by foreign powers to carry out a coup d'etat designed to collapse the government of Vladimir Putin.

00:09:23.000 There is an oligarch operating out of London, Khodorovsky, a billionaire who finances information warfare, has connectivity in Moscow.

00:09:33.000 And there's reason to believe that, well, he actually is saying that he was supportive of what Progrosian was doing, serendipitously, apparently.

00:09:41.000 But the idea was that Progrosian would initiate an action and then people would rally around him.

00:09:48.000 This would lead to The collapse of the Putin regime.

00:09:51.000 What happened is...

00:09:53.000 So, Prigozhin believes, apparently, I've seen the chatter on the internet that the CIA was behind this insurrection as a regime change.

00:10:07.000 Who knows whether it's true or not?

00:10:10.000 But anyway, Prigozhin was persuaded himself and apparently tried to persuade other people that if he launched this insurrection, that he would get support from the oligarchs in Russia and that he would get support from the Russian military that he would get support from the oligarchs in Russia and that he would get support from the Russian Correct.

00:10:33.000 There would be a collapse of the they were they were careful not to say we're going after Putin.

00:10:38.000 What they were going after was Shoigu and Gerasimov.

00:10:40.000 But you can't preserp a presidential authority.

00:10:44.000 I mean, sir, this would be as if when you become president, if somebody said we're going to march on Washington, D.C. because we want you to change the secretary of state and the secretary of defense.

00:10:55.000 What they're really saying is your days are numbered.

00:10:58.000 You're out of here.

00:10:58.000 And that's what they were saying to Putin.

00:11:00.000 Wagner began this.

00:11:02.000 Wagner was split.

00:11:03.000 First of all, not every Wagner fighter went.

00:11:06.000 The vast majority of the Wagner fighters remained in their camps.

00:11:09.000 Only about 4,000 or 5,000 of Wagner fighters went with Pergosian.

00:11:13.000 Many of them were misled into what they were doing.

00:11:17.000 They thought they were going to secure the border region from potential Ukrainian attack and were somewhat taken aback when suddenly they're surrounding Russian military facilities.

00:11:26.000 But they began to move no support whatsoever.

00:11:29.000 Every Russian leader rallied behind Putin.

00:11:31.000 Every political figure rallied behind Putin.

00:11:33.000 A handful of oligarchs, instead of rallying around Prigozhin, panicked and fled the country.

00:11:39.000 But nobody supported Prigozhin. 0.97

00:11:41.000 And it became clear We're good to go.

00:11:56.000 And it's surrounded the city, and we're prepared to launch an assault on Wagner, which would have been fairly one-sided.

00:12:03.000 I mean, as effective as Wagner is, understand that when you project power away from your base, you have limited ammunition, limited fuel, limited sustainability.

00:12:13.000 Wagner would have been cut off and annihilated.

00:12:16.000 I hate to interrupt, but explain to people how many Chechens there were And why the Chechens are so fanatically loyal to Putin. 0.91

00:12:29.000 Chechnya is one of the states of the Russian Federation, which famously was in revolt against Russia during, I guess, during the 90s and a very, very bloody revolt.

00:12:41.000 But explain why they are now, the military of Chechnya is now fanatically, zealously in love with Vladimir Putin.

00:12:52.000 Sure.

00:12:52.000 Well, as you mentioned, there were actually two Chechen wars.

00:12:55.000 The first one began, I believe, in 1993, lasted a couple of years, and it ended with a Russian defeat, and the Chechen Republic actually became an independent republic.

00:13:04.000 That didn't last very long.

00:13:06.000 In 1999, the war resumed, and it continued until around 2005 with some residual insurgency, even continuing up until recent times.

00:13:15.000 But Vladimir Putin was able to reach out to the Chechen rebels and convince them that they were being used by foreign intelligence services, that That this was a tragedy for them and for Russia, and a significant number of these former rebels switched over, including somebody named Ahmad Kadyrov.

00:13:36.000 He was the first president of the new Dutch Republic within the Russian Federation, and he established the precedent of working very closely with the Russians.

00:13:47.000 Chechnya has a unique status as a republic where they are in charge of their own economy.

00:13:53.000 They don't have to turn over money to the Russian Federation.

00:13:56.000 All the money they earned, they can reinvest back in.

00:13:59.000 And Chechnya is thriving.

00:14:01.000 I just came from there.

00:14:02.000 I visited Grozny in Chechnya just last month.

00:14:05.000 I have to tell you, in 2002, Grozny was the most destroyed city in the world.

00:14:09.000 Photographs show it looked like a nuclear bomb hit it.

00:14:12.000 Today, It is a thriving modern city where you have mosques and Orthodox churches side by side, Russians and Chechens socializing, peace and prosperity is breaking out all over.

00:14:25.000 Yeah, I mean, I think if people went in there and say, well, this isn't Jeffersonian democracy.

00:14:30.000 Well, it's not meant to be.

00:14:31.000 They had a civil war going just 15 years ago.

00:14:35.000 What it is is a thriving society whose leadership and the vast majority of the people Are extremely loyal to Vladimir Putin because they know who's responsible for the changes.

00:14:46.000 They know who made this prosperity possible.

00:14:49.000 They know what Chechnya looked like, and they know what it looks like today. 0.99

00:14:53.000 And they are fiercely loyal to Vladimir Putin, fiercely loyal.

00:14:57.000 So when this Ukrainian conflict started, the Chechens raised a large number of forces and sent them Right now, there's 15,000 highly trained, well-equipped Chechen forces in the special military operation.

00:15:13.000 A significant number of those were operating in the vicinity of Belgorod, and they were diverted to Rostov, several thousand of them, and they were ready.

00:15:24.000 At a drop of the hat to take out the Wagner fighters. 0.81

00:15:28.000 So they basically were surrounding the Wagner fighters and Purgosian.

00:15:34.000 Yeah, if the Ahmad forces went forward, they would have cut off the Wagner fighters in Rostov, and the Wagner fighters would have quickly run out of ammunition, and they would have been annihilated.

00:15:45.000 That's the reality.

00:15:45.000 It would have been bloody fighting.

00:15:47.000 The Wagner fighters are very good fighters, especially in an urban environment, but they would have been cut off from any supplies, and it would have been over very quick.

00:15:56.000 And this is where Prigozhin finally had the moment. 0.95

00:15:59.000 Vladimir Putin called him what he is, a traitor. 0.99

00:16:02.000 He stabbed Russia in the back. 0.98

00:16:04.000 Prigozhin's popularity plummeted.

00:16:06.000 When this started, he was a very popular figure.

00:16:09.000 Wagner enjoyed unprecedented levels of popularity.

00:16:13.000 Throughout Russia, there were these giant billboards with recruiting posters for Wagner.

00:16:18.000 Wagner had movies made about them.

00:16:20.000 People were singing songs about the exploits of Wagner.

00:16:24.000 Today, that's all over.

00:16:26.000 All those posters are down, and people recognize Purgosian as the traitor he was, and there's a huge stain on the honor of the Wagner group, which, by the way, is going to be disbanded, because Purgosian came face to face with the fact that nobody rallied to him. 0.93

00:16:40.000 He is a traitor.

00:16:41.000 He was marked for death, and he had a choice to either continue and die and condemn all of his soldiers to death, Or he could back down, which he did. 0.99

00:16:50.000 President Lukashenko of Belarus intervened on behalf, oversaw a negotiation.

00:16:56.000 It wasn't a negotiation.

00:16:57.000 It was a dictation.

00:16:59.000 Prigozhin has agreed to withdraw all the Wagner forces.

00:17:02.000 Prigozhin is going to be exiled into Belarus.

00:17:05.000 He's being kicked out of Russia.

00:17:07.000 He's going to be exiled to Belarus.

00:17:09.000 He'll be under the supervision of Lukashenko.

00:17:11.000 Every Wagner fighter that went into Russia that was knowledgeable of what Prigozhin is doing, They will be given a pardon, but they won't be allowed to join the Russian military. 0.97

00:17:22.000 Their days as a fighter are over.

00:17:24.000 The Wagner soldiers that remained in Russia or were misled will be permitted to sign a contract to join the Ministry of Defense, but Wagner as a unit is over.

00:17:33.000 It's being disbanded.

00:17:34.000 It's being broken up.

00:17:36.000 So the 80% of the Wagner soldiers who remained in their barracks and refused to follow Prigozhin into the insurrection will now be signed into the Russian military.

00:17:50.000 The 4,000 who followed Prigozhin and joined the insurrection will be drummed out of the military but pardoned.

00:17:58.000 And Wagner itself is true.

00:18:01.000 Yes.

00:18:02.000 Okay.

00:18:03.000 Anything else we need to know?

00:18:05.000 There's a couple things.

00:18:07.000 There's a lot of articles being written now about how this shows that Putin's regime is a house of cards, that Russia is weak, etc.

00:18:15.000 And I think what this demonstrates is the exact opposite.

00:18:18.000 Vladimir Putin remains the most popular Russian leader in history.

00:18:23.000 And the fact that nobody defected from him during this time This was a stress test for Russia. 0.50

00:18:31.000 It wasn't intentional.

00:18:32.000 A lot of people are talking about some sort of Game of Thrones fantasy of Maskarovka and deception.

00:18:38.000 No, this was a national tragedy.

00:18:40.000 This was an embarrassment for Russia. 0.63

00:18:42.000 You can't have just, again, when you become president, a military organization or Blackwater took up arms and marched on Washington, D.C., no matter how it was resolved, it would be an embarrassment for you.

00:18:55.000 It'd be an embarrassment for the nation.

00:18:56.000 This is an extremely embarrassing moment for Russia, for Vladimir Putin.

00:19:01.000 But they came through it And what's important is it had no impact on the battlefield.

00:19:06.000 The Russian military on the battlefield continued to perform.

00:19:09.000 There were no breakthroughs by the Ukrainians.

00:19:11.000 So anybody that was hoping that this incident would somehow lead to a collapse of Russia will be disappointed.

00:19:17.000 If anything, from this embarrassment, I think Putin will emerge even stronger than before.

00:19:23.000 Scott Ritter, thank you so much for updating us, and keep up the good work.

00:19:28.000 Thank you very much.

RFK Jr. The Defender - June 25, 2023

Putins Wagner Crisis with Scott Ritter

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