As the Russian Army Digs In, A Pro-Kremlin Mercenary Company Goes On The Attack in Ukraine—And Begs For Credit

Six weeks after the Ukrainian army launched twin counteroffensives in northeastern and southern Ukraine, Russian forces all across the country are digging in—and bracing for the next attack.

There’s only one place in Ukraine where the Russians still are on the offensive. The area around Bakhmut, a town in the center of a cursed rectangle formed by occupied Donetsk, Luhansk and Severodonetsk and the free city of Slovyansk in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Only it’s not really the Russian army that’s still mounting attacks toward Bakhmut, it’s the armies of the pro-Russian separatist “republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk and, more notably, The Wagner Group, the notorious and shadowy Russian mercenary firm whose for-profit soldiers have been on the front lines since the beginning.

Today thousands of Wagner mercenaries are in Ukraine.

The operations by The Wagner Group and the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics are small in scale. The separatist 2nd Army Corps “likely advanced” into the villages of Opytine and Ivangrad south of Bakhmut, the U.K. Defense Ministry reported on Friday.

At the same time, Wagner fighters “achieved some localized gains” in the same area. But at the same time, “there have been few, if any, other settlements seized by regular Russian or separatist forces since early July,” the U.K. Defense Ministry pointed out.

Russian planners aim to capture Bakhmut as a step toward capturing Slovyansk, which the British note “is the most significant population center of Donetsk Oblast held by Ukraine.”

But seizing a few villages around Bakhmut doesn’t count as taking the town itself. Slovyansk is an even tougher goal as Ukrainian forces continue to sever Russia’s supply lines, kill its increasingly unfit soldiers and capture its tanks and fighting vehicles.

The Kremlin’s “overall operational design is undermined by the Ukrainian pressure against its northern and southern flanks, and by severe shortages of munitions and manpower,” according to the U.K. Defense Ministry.

So why bother—and risk expending what little offensive combat power the Russian army and its allies have left? The separatist 2nd Army Corps is under overall Russian command, but Wagner under its financier Yevgeny Prigozhin has demonstrated a surprising degree of autonomy.

And it’s apparent, as Russia’s prospects in Ukraine diminish, that Prigozhin and his mercenaries are trying to distinguish themselves from the wider Russian military enterprise. Wagner even disputed Luhansk’s claim that its forces captured Ivangrad.

The mercenary firm insisted its fighters seized the village, according to The Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. “Prigozhin’s apparent desire to have Wagner Group fighters receive sole credit for the capture of Ivangrad is consistent with ISW’s previous observations that Prigozhin is jockeying for more prominence,” the think-tank stated.

It’s no secret the regular Russian army is in a state of collapse after losing around 100,000 soldiers killed and wounded in Ukraine since late February. A power vacuum is forming around the Kremlin. A vacuum that The Wagner Group clearly intends to fill.