Leaderless and Exposed, Russia’s Wagner Faces an Uncertain Future

Its chief is formally lifeless, as is its founding commander. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is claiming it doesn’t exist.

Wagner, the once-powerful Russian personal navy firm that fell out of favor with the Kremlin after an aborted mutiny in June, has been forged into even better uncertainty since Wednesday, when its chief, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, died in a airplane crash.

The Russian authorities mentioned Sunday that DNA checks, carried out on our bodies recovered from the positioning within the Tver area, confirmed that Mr. Prigozhin and 9 different individuals listed on the airplane’s manifest had died within the suspicious crash.

Now consideration is shifting as to if Wagner, which Mr. Prigozhin constructed over almost a decade into a world empire that benefited Moscow in addition to his personal pockets, in the end will die, too.

U.S. and Western officers say that the Kremlin is contemplating methods to convey Wagner below extra direct management of the Russian state however hasn’t made any last choices on what to do with the group.

It is unlikely that Russia needs to squander the educated fighters, geopolitical inroads and enterprise pursuits that Mr. Prigozhin cultivated since Wagner’s founding in 2014. His outfit has operated in not less than 10 nations.

But discovering a strategy to neutralize an armed group that posed one of many greatest threats to Mr. Putin’s tenure in 23 years, whereas additionally retaining its combating energy and international hyperlinks, is a troublesome activity, significantly given the longstanding enmity between fighters with the personal navy firm and the management of the Russian Defense Ministry.

“I think that PMC Wagner, in itself, as a structure, most likely won’t exist,” Aleksandr Borodai, a member of the Russian Parliament who briefly served as a Moscow-installed proxy chief in Donetsk, Ukraine, in 2014, mentioned in a cellphone interview.

Mr. Borodai mentioned Wagner fighters would proceed to combat and have been already becoming a member of volunteer formations, in addition to official items, below the Russian armed forces.

“There are many of them,” Mr. Borodai mentioned. “It’s a big flow. The flow didn’t start yesterday, and it won’t end tomorrow. People are coming in, they will continue to fight, they have experience.”

“As for the future of PMC Wagner, I don’t know,” he mentioned. “But there probably won’t be one.”

Mr. Putin has despatched combined alerts on his plans.

During a gathering on the Kremlin after the mutiny in late June, Mr. Putin informed Wagner commanders they may proceed serving collectively below completely different management, he mentioned final month in an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant.

Mr. Putin recounted how he proposed that the commanders preserve serving below a Kremlin-approved former Wagner member who makes use of the alias Gray Hair. Mr. Putin mentioned Mr. Prigozhin refused on his commanders’ behalf, regardless that some shook their heads in settlement.

In the identical interview, Mr. Putin additionally mentioned Wagner doesn’t exist, as a result of Russian legislation doesn’t allow personal navy firms.

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov has made comparable remarks, which look like aimed toward signaling that the group, because it stands, has no future in Russia.

Wagner theoretically may nonetheless perform with out Mr. Prigozhin and its founding commander, Dmitri V. Utkin, who the Russian authorities additionally confirmed died within the airplane crash, alongside 5 different passengers linked to Wagner and three crew members.

The mercenary group has what its affiliated Telegram channels describe as a “council of commanders,” who oversee operational issues everyday. Several members of the council weren’t on Mr. Prigozhin’s airplane.

None of these Wagner commanders has appeared in public or issued an announcement for the reason that crash, regardless of repeated guarantees of a coming announcement on Wagner-affiliated Telegram channels. It is unclear whether or not these commanders would have the Russian political capital to spearhead the bigger Wagner operation, as different elites most likely start circling Mr. Prigozhin’s extra profitable belongings.

At a makeshift sidewalk memorial to the fallen Wagner leaders close to Red Square in Moscow, fighters who went to pay their respects mentioned they have been positive that the personal navy firm would proceed working.

“Utkin and Prigozhin are not the whole leadership,” a 36-year-old Wagner volunteer who gave solely his name signal, Adzhit, mentioned, after he positioned a bouquet of white lilies in a plastic vase on the memorial.

“If you know the internal structure of Wagner, you can understand one thing: The loss of one, two, or three will not affect the effectiveness of this formation in any way,” he mentioned.

Still, with out the Kremlin’s clear imprimatur, the group’s operations danger falling aside. Mr. Prigozhin’s private connection to Mr. Putin courting to the Nineteen Nineties in St. Petersburg, Russia, served as a calling card overseas, permitting the tycoon to hawk geopolitical energy alongside safety providers in Mali, the Central African Republic, Libya and different nations.

Even after the mutiny, Mr. Prigozhin, who dealt with the enterprise facet of the group, was flying to areas in Africa making an attempt to reassure shoppers and proceed operations. His pursuits spanned oil, fuel, treasured metals and stones, Mr. Putin mentioned this previous week, noting that the tycoon returned from Africa to fulfill sure officers the day earlier than boarding the ill-fated personal jet in Moscow. His travels got here amid reviews that the Russian Defense Ministry was making an attempt to say direct management over a few of his overseas operations.

Catrina Doxsee, an affiliate fellow on the Center for Strategic and International Studies, mentioned she anticipated the mannequin that Mr. Prigozhin developed — utilizing a shadowy parastatal group to advance worldwide pursuits but additionally do enterprise — to proceed in some kind in Russia. But she suspected that future such operations may be extra fractured.

“One of the big things the mutiny in June demonstrated was the problem for Putin in allowing one company, and really one man, to hold the monopoly of power and of knowledge over all of these different operations,” Ms. Doxsee mentioned.

She mentioned that going ahead there could possibly be “many different actors fulfilling these roles, rather than one monopoly.”

Mr. Putin can also be probably to make sure that any subsequent operations keep away from the form of enmity with the Russian navy management that Mr. Prigozhin cultivated.

Aleksei A. Venediktov, who headed the liberal radio station Echo of Moscow earlier than the Kremlin shut it down final 12 months, mentioned the occasions in current days represented a “very important response to the Russian military elite.”

He mentioned Mr. Putin was speaking, “You are the ones most important to me. You thought I’d let this guy tear you apart. No,’” including that he was relaying, “I’m commander in chief, and you’re my loyal soldiers.”

Wagner constructed up a visual home model in Russia solely after Mr. Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine final 12 months. Wagner recruited closely from the Russian inhabitants, in addition to from Russian prisons, and was lauded on Russian state news throughout its marketing campaign to take the Ukrainian metropolis of Bakhmut.

The publicity got here alongside social media commentaries from Mr. Prigozhin, who beforehand operated largely in anonymity. The change fed the tycoon’s ego and gave him public standing, making it more durable for the Kremlin to eradicate the group utterly.

A trio of Wagner troopers in camouflage who visited the makeshift memorial in Moscow insisted that Wagner was not going to be disbanded.

“We are all standing by, we have not betrayed anyone, we have not abandoned anyone, and we will stand to the last,” mentioned one of many troopers, who gave his name signal as Prapor, quick for Ensign.

When requested if he would change contracts from Wagner to the Russian Defense Ministry, Prapor didn’t reply.

“We have one contract,” he mentioned. “And that is a contract with the motherland.”

Anton Troianovski, Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.