Russian Defense Minister’s Job Uncertain After Wagner Mutiny

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu resurfaced in an undated video on Monday, making his first public appearance after an aborted insurrection by Wagner Group mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

One of Prigozhin’s most strident demands was for President Vladimir Putin to sack Shoigu for allegedly botching the war in Ukraine.

Shoigu’s return appearance was merely a video released by the Defense Ministry that showed him riding in a helicopter and poring over maps in a military command post. According to the Ministry, the video depicted Shoigu visiting a “forward command post” in Ukraine and praising his troops for their “great efficiency in the detection and destruction” of defending forces.

The intent of the video was clearly to demonstrate that Shoigu is still on the job, although skeptical observers noted the footage was undated and, in fact, there were signs of the video being shot before Prigozhin launched his mutiny. The Defense Ministry did not explain why Shoigu vanished over the weekend while Prigozhin was marching on Moscow with almost no opposition. 

Prigozhin offered his own theory for Shoigu’s disappearance, calling him out as a “coward” for fleeing the Ukraine invasion command center in the city of Rostov-on-Don before the Wagner Group captured the city and began its drive for Moscow. Prigozhin has, in turn, been called a coward by some of his own supporters for abandoning his mutiny in less than a day and reportedly seeking refuge in Belarus. No one in Russia seems to have emerged from the weekend covered in glory.

Russia’s top military commander, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, also disappeared over the weekend and has yet to resurface. Prigozhin published a string of video rants on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram in which he accused Shoigu and Gerasimov of botching the Ukraine invasion and betraying the Wagner Group, which its leader constantly touts as far more effective than the Russian military.

Shoigu’s competence as a military commander may be in question, but his skill at surviving the turbulent post-Soviet political landscape is undeniable. Shoigu has been holding high offices in Moscow for even longer than Putin, putting in 18 years as Minister for Civil Defense, Emergencies, and Disaster Relief for the Russian Federation before becoming Defense Minister in 2012.

Shoigu’s longevity in power is all the more impressive because he is one of the few top post-Soviet officials who is not a full-blooded ethnic Russian. His father was Tuvan, a nomadic Turkic people with some kinship to the Uzbeks and Kyrgyz that can be found across Mongolia and Siberia. One of Shoigu’s early achievements was participating in a Tuvan archaeological expedition when he was only 12 years old.

Shoigu’s achievements do not include serving in the Russian military – he went from Soviet bureaucrat to Russian Federation disaster relief minister, to defense minister without ever serving in uniform. Prigozhin frequently harps on this during his Telegram broadsides against Shoigu’s inept leadership.

Shoigu was made a general without ever being a soldier and seems to have impressed Putin by successfully overseeing the Russian intervention in Syria and the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Putin rewarded Shoigu by presenting him with the prestigious “For Merit to the Fatherland” medal on the occasion of Shoigu’s 65th birthday in 2020. The two apparently became personal friends as well, as Shoigu became a frequent guest on Putin’s recreational hiking and hunting expeditions.

Shoigu developed a reputation for low-key competence, bringing an engineer’s training to military logistics as he modernized the Russian military and largely avoided public spectacle. Before the Ukraine invasion ruined that reputation, Shoigu was seen as one of several potential successors to Putin.

Shoigu’s fingerprints were all over the Ukraine invasion plan. According to Russian state media, he planned the operation with Putin and Gerasimov. Shoigu tirelessly repeated Putin’s claim that the goal of the “special military operation” was to “demilitarize and de-Nazify” Ukraine.

When the operation degenerated into a bloody stalemate instead of the expected triumphant sweep to Kyiv, Prigozhin blamed Shoigu and Gerasimov for letting Putin down. Later he accused them of failing to provide Wagner Group forces with the supplies and support they needed.

“Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the ammunition?” Priogzhin howled in a typical May 2023 social media eruption, standing before a pile of dead Wagner mercenaries. “[My men] came here as volunteers, and die for you to fatten yourselves in your mahogany offices!”

British military intelligence said in August 2022 that Putin might have grown disenchanted with Shoigu, but not enough to publicly humiliate or terminate him. Instead, Putin quietly moved Shoigu to the sidelines, instructing operational commanders in Ukraine to communicate directly with the Kremlin.

“Russian officers and soldiers with first-hand experience of the war probably routinely ridicule Shoigu for his ineffectual and out-of-touch leadership as Russian progress has stalled,” British intelligence said.

Shoigu was still nominally in charge of the invasion as of January 2023, however, when he gave the order to put Gerasimov in command of Russian forces. Gerasimov took over from Gen. Sergei Surovikin, who was demoted to become one of Gerasimov’s three deputies and seemingly became the designated fall guy for the failure of the invasion.

Putin made at least one effort to reconcile Shoigu and Prigozhin, inviting them both to a meeting in February 2023 to work out their differences, but the meeting had no apparent effect on their relationship.

Prigozhin said he launched his insurrection on Friday because Shoigu authorized a missile strike on a Wagner camp, killing a “huge” number of his troops. He also said Shoigu tried to wipe out all private military contractors (PMCs) by demanding their forces sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry, effectively conscripting them.

“A missile attack was launched on the camps of Wagner Group. Many victims. According to eyewitnesses, the attack was launched from the rear, meaning it was launched by the Russian Defense Ministry,” Prigozhin charged.

“This bastard will be stopped,” he vowed, meaning Shoigu.

The Kyiv Post chortled on Sunday that the decades-long “bromance” between Putin and Shoigu appears to be over, pointing to some increasingly tense body language from Putin towards his defense minister even before Prigozhin embarrassed them both.

Some Russian military bloggers are reportedly speculating on who Shoigu’s replacement will be. One of the more popular candidates is Sergei Surovikin, the same general Shoigu demoted when he put Gerasimov in charge of Ukraine operations.

Other observers raised the obvious point that Putin cannot afford to look weak, or damage the morale of his forces, by complying with Prigozhin’s demands and firing either Shoigu or Gerasimov.

“Putin values loyalty and will not let ‘his’ people down. Replacing Shoigu or Gerasimov after this weekend’s events would be seen as giving in to Prigozhin’s pressure,” Marie Dumoulin of the European Council on Foreign Relations told Bloomberg News on Monday.