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BazilBroketail t1_j60jkj9 wrote

So, who's their army then, the Russian army or Wagner?

This is a great article about the emergence of "Putin's chef" but I'm still confused on who Russias official army is, is this guy just the public fall guy and he's like the top shadow general of the regular Russian army? Also, not a great article as I said before, they go over the same shit like 6-7 times. It's like it's written by a college student trying to pad the length. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood, I don't know... but that article was a slog to get through.

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AlphaMetroid t1_j60ogys wrote

Wagner is Putin's special 'plausible deniability' unit. In the past they filled the role of Russia's military when it was too inflammatory to send official Russian military units somewhere. They would do the dirty work that would otherwise put a very negative spotlight on Russia's foreign policy and Putin could pretend to not be responsible because they're just an independent mercenary group.

In this case, Putin has dropped all pretenses of acting like they're unaffiliated. However, they're still technically separate from Russia's military and have their own separate command structure. While they fight with the same goal as the Russian military (taking ukraine) and they still answer to Putin, them being a separate entity has led to a lot of competition with the official Russian military.

To answer your question, 'Putin's Chef' is not a secret leader of the Russian military, he's just the leader of Wagner. Thanks to Putin's cronyism and tendency to favor his friends, Prigozhin has aspirations of outshining the official Russian military overseen by Defence Minister Shoigu. The reason it gets so confusing is because what Putin has essentially done is taken the Russian defence budget and split it between the official military and the 'unaffiliated' military and put two different cronies in charge. Then he sent conscripts (civilian and criminal alike) to join the official military and allowed Wagner to privately recruit mercenaries from the remaining population to avoid too big of a draft during their 'limited mobilization' last fall.

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Marandil t1_j61d6jo wrote

To make things even more complicated, there is also Rosgvardia, Kadyrovites (theoretically also a part of Rosgvardia, but afaik Kadyrov answers to Putin directly) and possibly other military structures.

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panda_gravy t1_j61j16y wrote

LNR and DNR (the separatist republics) also have separate military structures, and Shoigu, the Russian minister of defense, even has his own pmc that he’s sent to Ukraine, which is another one.

Highly recommend Perun’s latest video. He tried to tackle just how much of a shitshow it is.

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pimparo0 t1_j622fzl wrote

I honestly felt like I needed to make a chart after watching that video for all the different units and the cast of anal fissures leading them. He did a excellent job linking this structure to the way the Nazi military worked too.

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TjW0569 t1_j61utik wrote

If I had to guess, this a strategy so neither military gets too much power, and each can be used against the other.

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AlphaMetroid t1_j61vzu6 wrote

Makes sense, I'm sure a coup is one of Putins biggest worries. I almost want to say it's a smart idea, but then I look at how his war is going for him.

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LatterTarget7 t1_j65b4lt wrote

The Russian national guard was in Ukraine. They were called back. Likely just in case of protests for new mobilization or a coup attempt

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LurkerInSpace t1_j60q0tr wrote

Wagner are essentially a parallel army that's outside the normal command structure - the Kadyrovites are the same. Putin is still at the top, but the rest of the hierarchy is absent (which in theory makes them more flexible and makes it easier to learn what is really happening).

Back in World War II this was sort of done with the NKVD though their units were put in the Red Army when it was necessary (most famously at Stalingrad). Germany's SS was likewise an army outside the usual Wehrmacht command structure - gaining more power throughout the war as Hitler distrusted his generals.

The reason they are in fierce competition is because they're trying to win the same resources from the centre. The army has struggled to get these resources because its leaders aren't part of the ruling clique (who are instead drawn from the "siloviki" - high ranking FSB and other security services).

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FarawayFairways t1_j60zwdg wrote

It's not dissimilar to the way medieval armies were structured with various Dukes and nobles commanding private armies but which were periodically pooled to form some sort of national identity (when they weren't fighting each other or trying to support their own preferred candidate to become king)

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-Knul- t1_j60uqwi wrote

Like many autocratic regimes, Russia has multiple armies. It's a way to make coups more difficult to pull off.

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PhillipBrandon t1_j60lp98 wrote

I was really looking forward to finding out about the previously unknown legions of Richard Wagner and just came a way disappointed.

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Krivvan t1_j618uhx wrote

Many autocratic regimes have entire multiple competing militaries, not simply divisions of a single military. It makes it harder to overthrow a leader by simply taking a single institution, but the competition also causes infighting like we are seeing in Russia.

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Katin-ka t1_j627hha wrote

They are all fighting for a spot under the sun. Putin doesn't care (or, he doesn't have a choice) as long as his goals in Ukraine are achieved. I'm waiting for when the Wagner group and the Russian army start really fighting cause, as I understand it, they hate each other.

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