Russia-Ukraine Flash Report 26 APR 2023 13:00 PDT - Prigozhin Figured Out What You Already Knew

If you're a new subscriber (there are a lot of you), welcome! You might not have a lot of context, so let me explain.

About two weeks ago, it appeared that Yevgeny Prigozhin and Sergei Shoigu had stopped their very public and damaging fight, and the Kremlin was back to supporting PMC Wagner. But we pointed out this was a terrible arrangement for the mercenary organization.

Yes, Prigozhin and his "boys" got their ammunition back and artillery support, and the Russian Ministry of Defense no longer calls them "volunteers" but mentions PMC Wagner by name.

The deal went like this. PMC Wagner clears Bakhmut while Russian VDV forces hold the flanks and continue attacks on the T-506 and T-504 Highways to capture Khromove and Ivanivske. Here is the problem for Wagner.

Core Russian forces have not engaged in the most difficult urban street fighting since the 810th Naval Infantry was sent into Mariupol, lost their commander and deputy commander, and the unit ended up combat destroyed. The 810th has never recovered.

In Severodonetsk, the 1st Army Corps of the Donetsk People's Republic, the 2nd Army Corps of the Luhansk People's Republic, Chechen Akhmat, and Syrian volunteers led the main street fighting. You don't even hear about Syrian volunteer forces anymore, the 2nd Army Corps never recovered, and the 1st Army Corps is having to fill their ranks with unwilling Russian mobiks. Chechen Akhmat also never recovered. But who captured Severodonetsk? The Russian military did it. Wonderful headlines in TASS!

A core part of Russian military doctrine is Russia does not use its main forces for the hardest combat. They use proxy forces that suffer catastrophic causalities. They're doing this in Syria, and this doctrine has extended through four centuries. The same goes for Bakhmut. The forlorn hope was the penal units of PMC Wagner. Recruiting peaked in October 2022, which means that starting on May 1, just days away, thousands of mercenaries are hitting their six-month contract. Remember, Prigozhin was in the Russian prison system. He truly believes in "second chances" for convicts and has been honoring, en masse, those six-month contracts.

Most of the penal units are combat destroyed, and it has been the core fighters of Wagner leading the charge in Bakhmut and suffering huge casualties - yes, so have Ukrainian forces. Prigozhin has other problems in Mali and Sudan.

What happened to those Russian VDV units? This is where we get to the context part. We pointed out in the Situation Reports that after two attempts to advance on Bohdanivka and Khromove that ended in failure and one attempt to advance on Ivanivske that was catastrophic, with the Russian VDV losing almost all the positions west of the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas Canal in 48 hours. Territory that PMC Wagner fought for three months to gain. Then - nothing.

There were no attacks at all on the flanks. Worse, Ukrainian forces took positions back in Sacco i Vantsetti, and the VDV lost territory north of Orikhovo-Vasylivka. What did Russia do? Rotated in more proxy forces.

Private Military Company Redut, formed by Gazprom, which said in its filings with the Russian government was going to be a defense force for its infrastructure, was sent to Bakhmut. As was PMC Nevsky, which our favorite FSB Colonel Igor Strelkov Girkin called out as a fraudulent organization. How have they done? Terrible. 

PMC Redut is claiming they almost got into a shootout with PMC Wagner, and at least one of their members has been captured. They are undertrained, poorly armed, and have minimal heavy weapons. Nevsky did worse, reportedly abandoning their positions because they lacked adequate weapons. On top of this, Ukrainian artillery has been dismantling PMC Wagner logistics and firebases in Klishchiivka. The VDV is nowhere to be found, and in the fight for Khromove, PMC Wagner had to take over. They have thrown almost everything that was available at the T-506 Highway and physically reached the road a couple of times to be beaten back by the Ukrainian Territorial Defense.

The hand-wringing starting in February that the Ukrainian 82nd and 93rd had been sent to be destroyed in Bakhmut didn't turn out to be true. The 93rd is on the edge of Bakhmut, west of where the Mig-17 statute is holding the T-504 Highway "road of life." PMC Wagner hasn't even tried to attack in that direction for weeks, and the Russian VDV never tried. We have a nickname for the Ukrainian 93rd - the gods of war.

Priogozhin just had another meltdown, complaining about everything we reported on during the last two weeks. The regular Russian ground forces are doing nothing to protect the flanks, and they're getting chipped away. PMC Wagner is doing all the fighting and dying, and while he predicts that Ukraine will start its offensive on or around May 9 (ehhhh -- this is the same guy who said there are 200K troops in Slovyansk ready to attack Bakhmut), he is correct that the Russian flanks around Bakhmut are stretched. 

His past attacks on the Kremlin have not been received well, but unlike Colonel General and aspiring dentist Ramzan don don Kadyrov, who still hasn't figured out that the Kremlin purposely destroyed Chechen Akhmat, Prigozhin has had the ah-ha moment. His latest attack will likely land with a thud.

While he was openly suggesting he may withdraw his forces in February, with Bakhmut now 85% captured (give or take), he is committed to finishing the task. If he takes his surviving units and leaves, all of the work he did to build his reputation as a "turbo patriot" will be destroyed. Not that he was ever going to leave in the first place, but we'll pretend to take his late February threats at face value.

Nothing has changed from our point of view. The battle for Bakhmut is in its final phase. The Kremlin will do anything, short of CBRN, to capture Bakhmut. PMC Wagner is being intentionally and purposely degraded as Prigozhin is a threat to Putin. Ukrainian forces are running out of defensive hardpoints to hold the rest of the city, and the area around the Mig-17 will be the "Stalingrad" land stand defense of Bakhmut. 

The introduction of other PMCs into Bakhmut served two purposes. First, as a barrier to committing Russian airborne VDV forces and some of the last remaining "elite" forces in the entire Russian military. Had the gambit paid off, it would have taken away the shine from PMC Wagner.

Then there is the question of the Ukrainian offensive and the miserable, uncooperative weather.

The ironic part? It has been 82 days since Prigozhin mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Zelenskyy vowed to fight for every square meter of Bakhmut.