Intelligence twist in battle for Bakhmut
The Washington Post reported this morning that Yevgeny Prigozhin, so-called friend of Putin and the man behind the mercenary Wagner Group fighting in Bakhmut, made an offer to Ukraine’s Intelligence Directorate that if Ukraine pulled its forces out of Bakhmut, he would provide “information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them.” According to the Post, this information came from the leaks of sensitive U.S. intelligence by the U.S. Air Force IT specialist who posted hundreds of secret Pentagon documents on the Discord internet channel. The documents also reveal that Prigozhin had promised Putin that his Wagner Group forces would take Bakhmut in time for Russia’s Victory Day celebrations on May 9. That date has come and gone, Bakhmut still hasn’t fallen, and this week there are reports that Russian soldiers are retreating en masse from positions around the town.
This is extraordinary information for several reasons. One, the leak reveals that Prigozhin had a secret backchannel to Ukrainian intelligence agents he personally met with in an unnamed African nation. Prigozhin’s Wagner Group has a significant presence in Africa and according to the Post “provides security” to several African governments.
Two, the leak confirms that Prigozhin’s Wagner Group has been having major problems getting the Russian government to provide it with ammunition and other supplies badly needed by its soldiers in the fight for Bakhmut. Prigozhin publicly complained of this recently in a YouTube video he made when he ranted against Putin’s top defense officials as he stood next to a pile of the bodies of dead Wagner Group soldiers.
Three, the leaked documents apparently include more intelligence about what the Post calls a “power struggle between Prigozhin and top officials, including Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.” Prigozhin named Shoigu several times in his recent YouTube rant, belittling him for living a life of luxury back in Moscow while Prigozhin’s Wagner soldiers died in battle in Bakhmut.
Fourth, and most importantly in my opinion, is what the leak reveals about the status of Russia’s own intelligence gathering capabilities in this war. Prigozhin was so uninformed and militarily ignorant that he offered to trade information about Russian troop positions that Ukraine already had. U.S. intelligence agencies have been providing Ukraine with intelligence about Russian forces, where they are concentrated, the locations of their resupply depots, and Russian units’ strength or weakness since the beginning of the war.
Although the Washington Post story does not mention this, it is apparent to me that Prigozhin made the offer to trade information about Russian troop positions because he thought it would be valuable to Ukraine. He could only believe Ukraine did not have this kind of information because his own Wagner Group and regular Russian forces did not have accurate intelligence about Ukrainian military positions. I have written previously about how the Russian army is “blind” on the battlefield in Ukraine. Russia has only one optical satellite capable of providing tactical photographs of the battlefield, and that satellite crosses over Ukraine only once every two weeks. In a war, you don’t need information about the enemy next week, you need it now.
Ukrainian soldiers, on the other hand, have only to get on the radio and send a request to their commanders to get up-to-the-minute U.S. satellite intelligence about Russian troop positions. For months, they have been using such intelligence to target regular Russian army and Wagner Group forces in Bakhmut with artillery and rocket strikes.
This imbalance between Ukraine’s knowledge of Russian forces and how little Russia knows about the Ukrainian army is no doubt responsible for Ukraine’s relative success in its war against the far larger and more powerful Russian military.
The Post reports that one of the leaked documents, based on signals intelligence usually gathered by the U.S. National Security Agency, “states that Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, ‘expected the Russians to use details of Prigozhin’s secret talks with the HUR [Ukrainian intelligence agency] and his meetings with their officers in Africa to make him appear to be a Ukrainian agent.’”
With this report on the front page of the Washington Post on Monday morning, you can bet that Putin and his military chiefs will be questioning Prigozhin’s loyalty by Monday afternoon. If I were Prigozhin, I would be careful about getting too close to windows in buildings with more than four or five stories when he’s back in Moscow. He might also think about wearing rubber gloves when he reaches for doorknobs to get into his home or office.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is coming apart for many reasons, but this piece of news is one of the big ones. in his YouTube video last week
My jaw dropped when I read the WaPo article. Wow. Prigozhin might want to read up on Ernst Rohm and what happened to him.
Important safety tip for Russian oligarchs and others power players in Putin's autocratic state: Always have an anti-defenestration plan in place and update it frequently.
Why one shouldn’t trust in and rely on mercenaries to fight for you. Their “loyalty” extends only as far as their next payday, especially with their leaders. Military history is replete with instances of soldiers for hire changing flags and sides when they aren’t paid and supplied, but then Putin is obviously no student of history. Plus Putin has no loyalty except to himself, so it’s no surprise that his advisers and cronies are no more loyal than he is and only tell him what he wants to hear, until it’s too late. His massive malicious ego will be his and Russia’s undoing.