Wagner Group mutiny: The end for Russian defense minister?

Sergei Shoigu is back — at least on Russian TV. The Russian defense minister was not seen in public during the Wagner Group's day-long mutiny, during which the paramilitary's leader railed against Shoigu's leadership in the Ukraine war. Even after the mutiny ended, Shoigu did not appear on television.

It was not until Monday that Russian media showed pictures of him — supposedly in the war zone in Ukraine in the morning and then at a meeting of the security services in the evening, together with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There has been no statement from Shoigu about the short-lived rebellion.

"I think that's really his instinct," Brian Taylor, a Russia expert at Syracuse University in New York, told DW. "When he was head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, he very much liked to show up at a disaster and say that he was in charge and get the credit for it. But when there's a disaster taking place that he's actually responsible for, he really does not want to be seen in public at all." Instead, Taylor says, Shoigu works behind the scenes to cement his position.

The conflict between Yevgeny Prigozhin, co-founder and head of the Wagner Group, and the defense ministry boss has been building for months. First, Prigozhin blamed Shoigu and the chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, for the lack of ammunition in the long and brutal battle for Bakhmut. The defense ministry's press office refuted this and Shoigu declined to be drawn into the argument.

But increasingly, Prigozhin not only criticized how the war was being waged and the price being paid by Russian soldiers but also the Kremlin's justifications for it.

Taylor believes that the accusations against Shoigu and Gerasimov are valid in many ways. "The war effort on the part of Russia has been going very badly," he confirms. But much of what Prigozhin actually said was an indictment of the whole war and Putin, "who launched a war under false pretexts."

Can Putin fire Shoigu?

The Russian president now has two options: Sack Shoigu or leave him in the post.

Taylor comments that much of what Shoigu told Putin about the Russian military army turned out not to be true. So it would be logical for Shoigu to go, Taylor noted.

But this was already apparent a year ago, immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine. And Shoigu is actually a civilian defense minister, Taylor says. The country's military officers can be blamed for certain logistical failures at various stages while the responsibility for strategic misjudgments and Russia's resulting inability to achieve the oft-stated Russian goal of regime change in Ukraine must lie with Putin himself, Taylor argues. 

However observers believe that Putin cannot simply sack Shoigu now, as this would be a sign of weakness. If Putin were to sack Shoigu, analysts like Taylor suggest, he would be giving in to Prigozhin, who he has accused of treason.

Fabian Burkhardt, a Russia expert at Regensburg University's Institute of East and Southeast European Studies, agrees that it would have been a "clear sign of weakness" if Putin had dismissed Shoigu immediately after Prigozhin's mutiny. "Even if it's now clear that Shoigu is also extremely unpopular with the army, there are still good arguments for hesitating and for delaying his dismissal," Burkhardt told DW.

In general, Putin does not like to dismiss people he considers to be his own allies. And Shoigu is a special case, as his biography shows.

A popular politician

Shoigu, 68, is from a well-off family from Soviet Russia's administrative class, often known as the "nomenklatura." His father was an editor and a senior member of the local Communist Party in what is now the Russian republic of Tuva. After training as a civil engineer, Shoigu made a career for himself, managing major construction projects.

In the final years of the Soviet Union he moved to Moscow where he set up, and then headed, the state emergency service. This was later transformed into the federal Ministry of Civil Defense, Emergencies and Disaster Relief. Shoigu led this ministry for almost 20 years.

In fact in the late 1990s, he was considered to be the most popular Russian minister. Back then, he led a new political party called Unity — formed in 1999, it was a precursor to today's United Russia party —  into power. 

In 2012, just after Putin switched back from the office of prime minister to that of president, Shoigu became governor of the Moscow region. He was appointed minister of defense just a few months later. Shoigu then started to instigate reforms and soon the Russian army had, among other things, returned to the previous Soviet practice of unexpected combat readiness reviews.

In the spring and fall of 2021 — two times when Russia began amassing troops at the border with Ukraine — the Russian president and defense minister were at a retreat in the Siberian forest together. It was apparent from photos of them that Putin had a special relationship with Shoigu and some have touted the defense minister as his possible successor.

Russian leadership

Syracuse University's Taylor believes this to be unlikely. "The whole logic of Putin's very personalist system is that there is no alternative [to him]. There is no successor. You do not want to elevate anyone who could be seen as a potential rival to your power."

Taylor sees two other reasons for this too. Firstly, he says, Shoigu is almost the same age as Putin, and the new president would need to be someone from the younger generation. Secondly, Shoigu is not an ethnic Russian which also limits his career potential. Basically Shoigu is a safe choice for defense minister, a well-liked politician and a Putin ally, but likely nothing more, the expert explains.

There is another detail in Shoigu's biography that adds an interesting aspect to the confrontation with the Wager Group's Prigozhin. In the early 1980s, Shoigu headed a construction company in Siberia, where, he says, he had more than 10,000 prisoners under his command. Forty years later, the Wagner Group, which includes many former prisoners — including Prigozhin himself — tried to hound Shoigu out of office.

Impact on Ukraine war

Putin now faces a difficult decision, Taylor notes. Removing Shoigu would be a sign of weakness and he would be giving in to somebody who he has himself described as a traitor. But keeping him in office could further increase the army's dissatisfaction with leadership in the defense ministry.

Taylor says he would not be surprised if Putin were to replace Shoigu in a few weeks' time but that instead of humiliating him, he may find a way to push him into the background.

As for the impact on the war in Ukraine," I certainly think Ukraine could benefit from this.," Taylor concluded. The Russian army's response to the Ukrainian counteroffensive may now be less organized and its morale may be weakened, he argues. The Wagner Group mutiny has sewn doubt among senior Russian officers, some of whom appeared to agree with the things Prigozhin said publicly.

"On the other hand, we did see that even while the mutiny was ongoing, Russian forces in Ukraine were fighting back against this [Ukrainian] counteroffensive," Taylor concluded. "The war raged on while the mutiny was in progress. So I wouldn't necessarily assume that we're going to see a complete collapse along the Russian defensive line or anything like that. But all things considered, you've got to assume that this has all been to Ukraine's benefit, much more than Russia's."

This article has been translated from Russian by Markian Ostaptschuk