Lukashenka’s Existentially Cornered
- Serhiy Klimovsky
- 3.09.2023, 14:49
Poland and the Baltic countries took strong preventive actions.
The liquidation of Wagner PMC as a legal entity in Syria and Africa is gaining strength, as expected. But there is a question when Lukashenka and Putin will take shovels and start digging a hole, saying: “The Wagner was living. The Wagner is alive, but will no longer live in Belarus.”
The Kremlin ordered General Yevkurov the elimination of the Wagner Group in Syria. Although he spoke with Prigozhin in Rostov two months ago, sitting on a bench in front of the headquarters of the occupying forces. Yevkurov had to fly to Damascus on August 27 because of this. There he, along with General Ali Mahmoud Abbas, the chief of Assad's troops, met with the commanders of the Wagnerites. Gen Yevkurov put them before a choice - to fly with their troops to the Russian Federation or to become subordinate to Russian MoD command in Syria. He invited the head of Assad’s troops to this “time”, since the Syrians are entrusted with the disarmament of those Wagnerites who will start looking for a third option in the form of transferring to the service of Assad or local companies. In this case, the Syrians should deprive the Wagnerites of electricity, water and food. Gen Yevkurov involved the Syrians since he had been instructed to prevent skirmishes between the Russians.
There is another reason - the Wagner Group in Syria is mainly engaged in the protection of oil fields and they have long been recruiting local residents to perform their tasks. According to the estimates of the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, there are a total of about 3,000 militants of various levels of training in such troops. The problem is inevitable. What to do with them? Although, they are Assad's subjects. The Russian Federation has nothing to do with them. Shoigu wants to drag some of them to Ukraine. That’s why he sent Yevkurov to Syria to solve this difficult issue as his deputy.
Shoigu has the same problems with the Russian Wagner Special Troops as those that the Wehrmacht General Staff had throughout the Second World War with the Dirlewanger Brigade. They reduced its troops to a battalion number and then broadened to a division. Oskar Dirlewanger was convicted in 1934, and since he did not belong to the party in rule like Prigozhin, he could not become "Hitler's Chief" and left to fight as a volunteer in Spain on Franco's side. Then he was instructed to lead a detachment of poachers and military men who violated the code of honor of the Aryan and act as non-Wehrmacht troops. Then they began to use them against the partisans, replenishing them with criminals, prisoners from the Red Army and various rabble. The burning of Khatyn is a minor episode in the track record of Dirlewanger’s Sonderkommando. The mass atrocities were committed by the Dirlewangerites during the suppression of the Warsaw and Slovak uprisings when the number of their troops was as large as a brigade. The military treated them with disgust and Dirlewanger could not shout: “Where are the shells!” When his team was driven to the front.
The Kremlin and the FSB modified the experience of the Nazis and brought it to the maximum by creating the Wagner Group and promoting Prigozhin in the media. The situation in Africa forced the Kremlin to liquidate the Wagner Group as a special unit and legal entity, but Shoigu had to filter this shit in order to extract goodies since the Russian version of the Dirlewanger’s Sonderkommando was exaggerated.
Therefore, Yevkurov flew to that part of Libya controlled by Haftar, and then to Syria following Shoigu’s order on August 22, the day before the Prigozhin’s plane crash. It is easier in Haftar's Libya - there are few Wagnerites and it is an important point from where illegal migrants sail to Italy. The British Defence Intelligence had reasons when suggesting that Major General of the GRU [Russia’s counterintelligence service - Ed.] of the General Staff of the Russian Federation Andrei Averyanov, who oversees Africa, could be involved in the crash of Prigozhin's plane.
Averyanov was born in 1966 in Ashgabat and in 1988 graduated from the Combined Arms Military School in Tashkent. Through the GRU, he participated in the wars in Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and then in Syria. He was taking part in capturing Crimea in 2014. He is considered one of the top administrators for the migrant attack on the EU in 2015-2017. He also may be involved in the transfer of migrants from Africa to Belarus. According to Bilingcat, he was involved in the poisoning of Skripal, the explosion of an arms depot in the Czech Republic, and the attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016. At the Africa-Russia summit, Putin personally introduced him to the head of the Central African Republic. Averyanov briefly indicated that "security" is the scope of his activities when answering questions at a meeting. According to the British services, Averyanov travelled to Africa even before the summit. It is assumed that to analyze the situation on the spot, including the situation with the Wagnerites. This is the basis of the version of his conflict with Prigozhin. Probably, Averyanov treated him like the German military treated Dirlewanger.
The Wall Street Journal believes that Averyanov is now entrusted with the task of filtering not only the Wagnerites in Africa. He became the Kremlin's underboss in the Sahara and subordinates to the GRU and Shoigu. In connection with the announcement of jihad against the Wagner Group in Mali, they are not only eliminating this PMC but changing the whole tactics. Instead of one large Wagner PMC operating in a number of African countries, they will work through small PMCs, registering several of them in each state. Such PMCs also existed at the same time as the Wagner Group, but now they are the priority.
The priority is also the basic registration of such PMCs not in the Russian Federation, but in the "grey zone" - in Abkhazia, in Transnistria, in the occupied territories of Ukraine and in Asian countries. For example, the Konvoy PMC is registered in Crimea. It’s necessary not to expose Moscow too much. For the same reason, the militants recruited by these PMCs do not sign even secret contracts with the Russian “Ministry of Conquest” [Ministry of Defence - Ed.]. Such contracts are signed only with the highest command staff of the PMCs.
This PMC multi-headed Zmei Gorynich [a dragon in Russian folk - Ed] should, according to Moscow's plan, make it easier to achieve its goals in Africa and allow it to get rid of the heads that have become uncomfortable without too much noise, as happened with the Wagner leader. It is also more convenient in the context of the growing competition for Africa between Moscow and Beijing.
The recent Brics + Africa summit brought Moscow three major disappointments.
First, Beijing is not calmly but confidently promoting itself to the leadership of the “global South”, using the synergy of the Russian Federation. Moscow makes noise beneficial to Beijing. Once again, it is the same old story: competition between the USSR and China in the socialist camp and outside it is being repeated. The second disappointment is that Moscow has been screaming at the Brics summits for three years about the need for global de-dollarisation and, as a result, received the yuan as a replacement for the dollar, and not its own ruble. The third and most cruel disappointment is that Xi Jinping at the summit brazenly took away from Moscow's hands, if not the whole of South Africa, then Cyril Ramaphosa for sure, promising him full support in the 2024 elections.
The Kremlin was very offended, and the Russian media were flooded with articles about the Chinese economic problems after the summit. The articles are more or less objective, but the irritation is noticeable, although it has not yet developed into a factual and inevitable decay of Chinese capitalism, communism, or something else.
In response, Beijing, with Chinese humour that is becoming as subtle as English, politely invited Putin to come personally to the Belt and Road Initiative Forum in October. Only delegations from small countries visited this forum to ask for yuan. The Balkan and Eastern Europe representatives were there, but usually not at the level of heads of state. Beijing has a straight rule - it talks with large countries in the G20 or individually, and with the rest at the Belt and Road Initiative meetings. By inviting Putin, Beijing puts the Russian Federation in the place of Lithuania, the Czech Republic and those European countries that stopped attending these forums. Officials in the Kremlin see a catch and say that Putin is thinking about whether to go or say that he is very ill. He can’t say that he’s too busy.
But Beijing also has its own problems in Africa besides Moscow. Also, they are to share Eritrea, Mozambique and Zimbabwe with Moscow anyhow. Moreover, these problems have little to do with Niger, where the junta of General Tchiani, it seems, will soon agree to some kind of honourable surrender.
The contours of these problems have emerged first in Zimbabwe and now in Gabon. In January 2022, the Chinese company Sinomine bought the oldest British-built mine in Zimbabwe for $180 or $200 million to mine lithium. But in 2023, Zimbabwean Marxists told the Chinese Communists that they were obliged to process lithium not in the PRC, but on the spot, otherwise it would be neo-colonialism. What the Chinese said is unknown. Perhaps they gave money to the opposition, and the incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa, remembering Lukashenka's experience, modestly pictured himself winning in the first round with 50.8% of the vote. The opposition, which spoke already at the beginning about the massive bribery of voters, said that it was impossible to verify the result and that it was falsified, but it did not reach the Maidan. It is possible that the Chinese gave money to both those and those, on the basis that in the end they will not be forced to build a plant in Zimbabwe for the processing of lithium and according to the EU environmental standards.
China was the first country outside Africa to respond to the military coup in Gabon, which led to the fall of the authoritarian regime of the Bongo family, which had ruled the country since 1968. Until 1991, only one party was allowed in Gabon, modelled on the CPSU, and they allowed a limited multiparty system after the collapse of the USSR. This haste suggests that Beijing had some business with the ruling clan in Gabon. For the past 50 years, Beijing has never been in a hurry to condemn the coups in Africa before anyone else on the planet.
Unlike Moscow, which organizes coups in Africa to have its own people there, Beijing gradually buys necessary local elites. Therefore, coups in lured countries are burned money for China and also the need for new investments. As a result, Beijing condemned the coup in Gabon but called on everyone to dialogue and save the life of the arrested Ali Bongo. Beijing is trying to bargain to keep its investment in Gabon's elite. Again, unlike Moscow, which condemned the coup and neo-colonialism, offered its services, and frantically tried to remember what links the Russian Federation with Gabon. They did not remember anything despite selling Kalashnikov rifles to counter elephant hunters in the twentieth century. So, Moscow announced that the Wagner Group allegedly also operated in Gabon. But this is a weak and false argument. In addition, Prigozhin did not discover Gabon, like Columbus did America. Moscow is clearly taking revenge on Beijing for taking Ramaphosa away by encroaching on Gabon.
As a result, of all the countries of the Global South, the Wagner Group is only in Belarus. This club accepts not according to the place of the country on the globe but on the basis of how long the local authoritarian has been able to hold out and in what official status they have. Lukashenka meets all the criteria and legally enters the Global South Club.
The Kremlin planned to keep Wagner PMC only in one country of the Global South, in Belarus. Lukashenka even mockingly registered it as an educational society at the place of deployment. However, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Estonia broke this plan on August 28, demanding that Wagner Group be removed de facto and de jure from Belarus, otherwise, they would close the border with Belarus. But they didn't say when. They can close any day for two or three weeks for testing.
In this case, Królewiec/Königsberg will become an island drifting to its native harbour, and the trade of Kazakhstan, China and the Russian Federation with the EU through Poland will finally stop. For Moscow, the official keeping the Wagner troops in Belarus makes sense to use it in border provocations and say - “It’s not our responsibility. This is the ownerless Wagner, an organization banned in the Russian Federation. Lukashenka bears the responsibility.” In turn, Lukashenka will repeat the old idea that he was not hired to guard the border with the EU.
But this scheme becomes meaningless when the border is closed. Poland and the Baltic countries took strong preventive actions. Official elimination of the Wagner Group in Belarus means publicly admitting defeat without firing a shot for the Kremlin and Lukashenka. As a result, the Kremlin is faced with a choice - still acting according to the scheme and bringing the situation to the closure of the border and then burying the Wagner Group so that it is opened, or immediately burying it so that it is not closed.
What Moscow will choose is not yet clear. However, it is clear that Poland and the Baltic countries have created a strong weapon against Russia. If Moscow decides that the Wagner Group and the whole scheme with provocations on the border are not worth situation with closed borders and it buries the Wagner Group, then the next step of the coalition from Poland and the Baltic countries will be to demand that Lukashenka release all political prisoners, otherwise the border will be closed. In the future, the requirement to withdraw the occupation troops of the Russian Federation from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant may become a condition for maintaining an open border. Such prospects are already putting the Kremlin in an existential impasse. The Kremlin is still looking for a way out of the situation in a drunken party during the drills with the command staff, generals and colonels from the CSTO countries, which are taking place in Belarus from September 1 to 6. They will drink in conditions close to combat - in tents and amongst nature if the weather is good enough.
Serhiy Klimovsky, Facebook