Vladimir Putin’s mad dog was always going to bite him

When Vladimir Putin authorised the creation of the Wagner Group back in 2014, the aim was to provide him with his own private army that would help him to expand Russia’s global reach. So the Russian president has only himself to blame for the fact that, rather than fulfilling his dream of reestablishing Russia as a major world power, the mercenary monster he helped to create is now attempting to overthrow his autocratic regime.

But then what did Putin expect when he opted to make a known criminal like Yevgeny Prigozhin head of the Wagner Group? Prior to his sudden emergence on the Kremlin scene, Prigozhin’s main claim to fame was the 13-year stretch in a Russian penal colony he was given for his role in the violent mugging of a young woman in St Petersburg.

Prigozhin may have tried to portray himself as a reformed character after his release, making his fortune running restaurants, but his criminal instincts have never been far from the surface in his running of Wagner.

In Ukraine, where Wagner was recently involved in the assault of the eastern city of Bakhmut, Russian prisoners were recruited to Wagner’s ranks after Prigozhin personally toured a number of Russian prison camps. His message was simple: fight for six months, and those that survive will have their freedom guaranteed.

Prisoners who opted to join Wagner’s ranks did so because, as one of them remarked of Prigozhin, “He’s one of us and speaks our language.” But many of them have come to regret their decision, as thousands former Russian convicts are said to have been killed during the Bakhmut offensive as Russian commanders resorted to their traditional “meat grinder” tactics, where no serious consideration is given to casualties.

Nor was Prigozhin the most sympathetic of commanders, despite his subsequent claim that Wagner’s high death toll at Bakhmut was due to the woeful lack of support it received from the official Russian military.