Ukraine’s gamble in Bakhmut paid off, fueled Putin-Prigozhin feud: Former CIA officer

The bloody battle for Bakhmut earlier this year proved costly for the Ukrainian military, with some Western observers questioning why Kyiv would dedicate so many troops and so much of its precious firepower to a city of relatively little strategic value.

But Kyiv was playing the long game, according to Daniel Hoffman, a former senior CIA officer who once served as the agency’s Moscow station chief. Ukraine made a high-stakes bet, Mr. Hoffman said at a Washington Times Foundation event last week, that its fierce defense of the city would help drive a wedge between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Wagner Group mercenaries at the front lines of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

That gamble seemed to pay off late last month when Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a short-lived rebellion that shook the foundations of the Kremlin and represented a rare public challenge to Mr. Putin’s decades-long, unquestioned power in Russia.

That semi-coup came after Mr. Prigozhin said he’d lost more than 20,000 of his men in the battle for Bakhmut, and he blamed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other Russian officials for failing to give his men what they needed to take the city. A drive by the Russian brass to bring Wagner Group forces formally under their command appears to have inspired Mr. Prigozhin’s abortive rebellion last month.

In short, the gamble by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems to have paid off.

“The Biden administration, going back to March of 2023, was publicly stating that Ukraine could withdraw from Bakhmut and … that they wouldn’t face any tactical or strategic cost for doing that,” Mr. Hoffman said at last week’s “Washington Brief,” a monthly forum hosted by The Washington Times Foundation.

“But Zelenskyy made the decision to stand and to fight because Zelenskyy realized this was the opportunity for Ukraine to drive a wedge between the Wagner mercenaries who were on the frontlines, cannon fodder, in that bloody battle in Bakhmut, and Russia’s Ministry of Defense. And that was the turning point, that was the spark I think that lit this insurrection” by Mr. Prigozhin and his men.

“That was the key strategic benefit of fighting in Bakhmut,” said Mr. Hoffman, who writes a regular opinion column for The Washington Times. “And yes, Ukraine lost many of its soldiers, but the fight was worth it. Because now Wagner has been taken out of Russia’s military formation.”

Indeed, Ukraine lost thousands of its own troops in the fight for Bakhmut and ultimately lost nearly all of the city to the Russian side, which was led by Mr. Prigozhin’s Wagner fighters. But Ukraine held on to the outskirts of the city and Mr. Prigozhin in early June said his troops no longer had full control of the city.

Mr. Prigozhin called the failure to hold all of Bakhmut a “shameful” display by the Russian military proper, under the command of Mr. Shoigu and Russian Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov.

Just a few weeks later, Mr. Prigozhin launched his insurrection, seeking to drive Mr. Shoigu and Gen. Gerasimov from their posts. He even appeared willing to launch an assault on Moscow to achieve his aims. He eventually struck a deal with the Kremlin after an 11th-hour mediation by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, with his Wagner fighters allowed to either return home or formally join the Russian military. The Kremlin also dropped its criminal charges against Mr. Prigozhin.

A ’charade?’

The episode was widely viewed by Western analysts as an example of the chaos and poor command-and-control systems inside Russia’s military.

But some specialists see it differently.

Alexandre Mansourov, professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, argued that the supposed “rebellion” by Mr. Prigozhin and his Wagner forces may have been carried out with at least tacit support from Mr. Putin. The Russian president, Mr. Mansourov argued, may have believed he could use the appearance of an uprising, and its subsequent failure, to send a message to other right-wing figures in Russia who may try to challenge his authority.

“In my opinion, Prigozhin’s ’armed rebellion’ was an imitation. … I think it was an imitation of an insurrection, really, it was a charade in my opinion concocted by President Putin himself,” Mr. Mansourov said at the Washington Times Foundation event.

For Mr. Putin, the failed rebellion may have other positive ramifications. With Wagner fighters now off the front lines, the Kremlin could have public justification for a widespread mobilization, or draft, of Russian civilians into the Ukraine war.

“What’s left then? It’s the regular folks, ordinary folks, and of course, now there is a legitimate case for popular mobilization,” Mr. Mansourov said.

A widespread popular mobilization, while politically risky for Mr. Putin, would signal that Russia is undaunted by its failures so far in the war and is prepared to fight Ukraine for years to come. In a piece this week for Russia’s state-run Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, former President Dmitry Medvedev, still a top security aide to Mr. Putin, suggested that Moscow is prepared to fight Ukraine and its Western allies for decades. He even signaled that a nuclear war is “quite probable” and that an “apocalypse” may be on the horizon.

“Our goal is simple: To eliminate the threat of Ukraine’s membership in NATO. And we will achieve it. One way or another,” wrote Mr. Medvedev, now the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, according to English-language media accounts of his comments.

His remarks come just before a widely anticipated NATO summit next week in Lithuania, where Ukraine’s eventual membership in the Western military alliance will be a top point of discussion.

But Russia’s apparent willingness to fight a years-long war carries its own risks, according to Mr. Hoffman, the former CIA officer. He said that while Mr. Putin could escape the Wagner rebellion with little immediate damage to his regime, he faces growing peril the longer the conflict drags on.

“The longer Russia carries on with this war, the weaker Putin gets. The weaker he gets, the more he feels like he has to carry on with the war,” Mr. Hoffman said. “At some point, there will be a breaking point. Autocracies are brittle. Russia will break. And the big challenge for our intelligence community is to determine what happens next.”