One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies is using the row over the war in Ukraine to assume increased influence inside the Kremlin, U.S. and European officials said, providing a rare glimpse into the tension brewing among Putin’s allies and how is Russia’s disastrous war in Ukraine. influencing the internal dynamics of the Kremlin.
“It’s a real ‘House of Cards,’ but in the Kremlin,” said a source familiar with US intelligence. “Everybody’s stabbing each other in the back.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group paramilitary group, has directly confronted Putin over his belief that the war in Ukraine is being mismanaged by top generals currently in charge, US officials tell CNN.
U.S. intelligence officials considered Prigozhin’s meeting important enough to include it in one of President Joe Biden’s daily briefings last month, the sources said. Prigozhin’s allegations come as at least one other Kremlin official has expressed similar concerns to Putin about the Russian military’s mishandling of the war in Ukraine, two intelligence sources told CNN.
While it is unclear how Putin reacted to the confrontation, US intelligence officials believe it is further evidence that Prigozhin, who is not part of the Russian government, is trying to assert his influence at a time when the US is closely watching the power structures inside the Kremlin.
The Kremlin has denied that officials criticized its handling of the war.
“This information is fundamentally inaccurate,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN. “President Putin holds meetings on the special military operation on a regular basis, and all the participants express different views on how to work.”
The Washington Post first reported the meeting between Prigozhin and Putin.
Prigozhin in particular used the chaos surrounding the conflict to try to bolster his own power at the expense of the Russian defense establishment, US and Western intelligence officials said. Its forces have played an increasingly prominent role on the battlefield in Ukraine, one of several unofficial fighting forces that Moscow has turned to to address frontline manpower shortages — forces that are also vying with each other for influence.
The US believes Prigozhin’s complaints to Putin centered on the Russian Defense Ministry and his belief that Russian generals are bundling up the operation and that more aggressive tactics should be used, the sources said.
Prigozhin has made strong public criticisms of the Ministry of Defense on Telegram that echo his private messages to Putin, criticizing the generals in charge of the war and advocating a more aggressive approach. And he has amassed a digital following on Telegram that the Washington think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, has argued is “increasingly challenging” Putin’s “monopolization of the state intelligence space” — with some of Russia’s influential military bloggers they even suggest that he replace Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Prigozhin “sees an opportunity to step up to the station,” said Michael Kofman, an analyst specializing in the Russian military with the Center for Naval Analyses, and is “seeking to embarrass Shoigu in hopes of advancing himself.”
U.S. intelligence officials are keen to determine how receptive the Russian leader has been to these criticisms from longtime secretaries who have previously appeared extremely secure in their positions, according to sources familiar with the matter — in part because it might give them a window whether Putin feels pressured to take more drastic measures in Ukraine to regain momentum.
U.S. and European intelligence officials have long watched Shoigu, speculating that the disastrous development of Putin’s war may put him on thin ice in the Kremlin.
But intelligence officials stress that accurately interpreting and predicting the machinations of power inside Putin’s Kremlin remains more of a murky art than a hard science.
“It’s Russia – there are no endless legal conspiracies,” said one US military official.
As Russia faced ongoing and acute manpower shortages at the front, Moscow was forced to turn to a casualty of combat outside the Russian military, including not only Wagner, but also Chechen fighters and territorial militias from two separatist Ukrainian provinces.
There has been a huge amount of infighting between these groups, sources said, making it nearly impossible for Moscow to “control all these elements in a coherent way,” according to a source familiar with Western intelligence.
That dynamic has contributed to a series of high-stakes power struggles in Moscow already underway, as top Russian security officials have sought to deflect blame for — or exploit — the unfolding disaster in Ukraine.
Wagner has emerged as one of the most important attack forces Russia has, sources said, with their fighters often treated as disposable, according to Kofman. Like the Russian military, Prigozhin wants to retain his best forces and as a result is recruiting fighters from Russian prisons as “cannon fodder”, according to a European intelligence official.
Prigozhin sought to exploit Moscow’s reliance on his fighters to amass more power in Moscow — though to what end remains unclear, sources said. He has been increasingly willing to stand up to Shoigu in recent weeks, according to the European intelligence official, but whether he wants his organization to be formally integrated into the Russian military remains an open question.
However, Prigozhin’s forces failed to make significant advances in the Bakhmut region of eastern Ukraine, where detachments of Group Wagner had been fighting unsuccessfully since early summer to capture the town.
And there are other senior Kremlin officials and many Russian oligarchs who believe the war should end “because Putin’s ambitions are seen as unrealistic,” a senior Western intelligence official told CNN. It is unclear, however, whether they have voiced their opposition to the war directly to Putin.
“The Kremlin is walking a tightrope,” the official said. “Mobilization is widely unpopular in Russia, and any talk of continued and additional mobilization is banned in the controlled intelligence space. Several senior officials would like the war to end because Putin’s ambitions are seen as unrealistic. The same with many oligarchs.”
“At the same time, you have people like Prigozhin, [Chechen leader Ramzan] Kadyrov and some influential military bloggers who want Moscow to go ‘all in’.
