00:00 Yesterday, we reported on a video which appeared to show the Wagner Group boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin,
00:05 for the first time since last month's attempted mutiny in Russia.
00:08 In that video, Prigozhin addressed his mercenaries in Belarus and he pledged that before deploying
00:13 them to Africa, these soldiers would help train up the Belarusian army.
00:17 Today, it appears that training has got started and Wagner carried out drills alongside Belarusian
00:23 soldiers in an area close to the Polish border.
00:27 This has prompted Poland to build up troop numbers along its side of the border.
00:33 Let's get some more analysis now and we can speak to Velina Chakarova, who is the founder
00:37 of the geopolitical consultancy FACE.
00:40 Thank you very much indeed for joining us.
00:43 Let's start with last month's mutiny.
00:46 Knowing what we know now, do you interpret those actions of the mutiny as having been
00:52 damaging to President Putin or perhaps a piece of theatrics which actually leaves Putin in
00:58 a stronger position?
01:01 In my view, as I've been actually covering the so-called mutiny right from the beginning,
01:06 this has been a staged act and now we actually already see the first steps that point to
01:13 a kind of coordination and by no means actually a brokered kind of deal between Prigozhin
01:21 and Putin.
01:22 And the reason for that is that not only are now Wagner troops actually training with Belarusian
01:30 army claiming to turn this army into the second, but they will be actually keeping an eye on
01:40 the nuclear weapons, the Russian nuclear weapons stationed on Belarusian soil.
01:46 And they will be also watching the movements along the eastern flank of NATO.
01:51 So by no means this has been actually a mutiny, a coup or whatsoever, but in fact it allowed
01:58 actually Putin to not only place Wagner troops, the most loyal as we've seen, and I mean,
02:06 deriving from the speech of Prigozhin, they have a lot on the agenda, not only in Africa,
02:13 but more is to be seen, most likely linked again to the military developments in Ukraine.
02:21 And we should not forget that one of the main goals of Russia before the full-scale war
02:26 in Ukraine was in fact to also have five to eight military bases on African soil.
02:32 Why?
02:33 Because they are also seeking an access to the Indo-Pacific for the obvious reason of
02:38 the big systemic competition between the United States and China there.
02:43 And Russia obviously wants to have, to play a role, to have also an access to this, to
02:50 run for the future.
02:51 Okay.
02:52 So, I mean, it seems like, you know, we've learnt a bit more from Wagner's intentions.
03:00 Just listening to Yevgeny Prigozhin's video message yesterday, what stood out for you?
03:05 What do you think he was, what announcements, what manoeuvres do you think he was lining
03:09 up for in that address?
03:13 Let me first be very, very clear for the audience, and that is that if, or let's say had Prigozhin
03:21 truly betrayed Putin, it is highly unlikely that he or his family and relatives would
03:27 have survived given Russia's notorious track record in dealing with dissent and traitors.
03:33 Okay, let me just interrupt you on that point.
03:35 I just want to ask your opinion.
03:37 Do you think that the report that we heard circulating at the time of the mutiny and
03:42 the subsequent days that perhaps Prigozhin had some, what they call, "compromat" or some
03:46 compromising material on President Putin was simply a red herring or perhaps someone's
03:52 wishful thinking?
03:54 It is unfortunately the Western wishful thinking.
03:57 Of course, the majority of the Western analysts and obviously intelligence services were delighted
04:04 to see this kind of development, pointing to the possibility that finally a political
04:09 turmoil would happen in the Kremlin.
04:12 But in reality, I think that this was more or less coordinated for the sake of political
04:21 stability at home.
04:22 Why?
04:23 Because the Russians are more or like mostly actually fearful of any kind of civilian wars
04:32 at home.
04:33 They are more than afraid of any kind of local bloodshed.
04:37 So in reality, what happened after this so-called mutinity is that the support, the public support,
04:45 and yes, we can argue of course that the polls conducted by the agencies in Russia are more
04:52 or less not to be trusted.
04:55 But even Levada poll pointed that more than 70 percent of Russians would actually vote
05:00 for Putin following, say, mutinity.
05:05 So in reality, the first and most important reason was domestic oriented or let's say
05:14 domestic derived, that Putin has started preparing for the election campaign and that is the
05:21 election that will take place on the 17th of March.
05:25 Let me just be the devil's advocate here.
05:27 I mean, you're giving President Putin an awful lot of credit here for having masterminded
05:31 this wonderful piece of theatre.
05:34 But isn't it simply possible that he has a loose cannon in the form of Yevgeny Prigozhin,
05:39 who's an unpredictable, unusual sort of a human being and he's turned into sort of Putin's
05:44 Frankenstein that seems to be one of the mainstream lines of thinking in the West.
05:51 What do you say to that?
05:52 Yes, I've heard, of course, about this kind of argumentation and I fully understand it,
06:01 but this is very much Western way of thinking.
06:04 We need to understand that first and foremost, a lot of red lines have been crossed over
06:10 the last months.
06:11 That means tolerating Prigozhin's behavior when he was actually bashing publicly the
06:19 chief of general staff, General Gerasimov, and the Minister of Defense Shoigu.
06:25 He never, ever actually has criticized Putin openly until the very last moment on the day
06:31 of the so-called mutiny.
06:33 Second, a more important clue that we need to pay attention to is that there are literally
06:40 no legal and financial consequences for Prigozhin.
06:45 Now think of what happened to the oppositional figure Alexei Navalny, who is less influential
06:51 and less popular.
06:53 In fact, he's no threat, no political threat to Putin whatsoever, and yet he's now, as
06:59 we speak, facing lifelong prison for much, much lesser, let's say, actions that he undertook.
07:09 So no legal consequences.
07:12 Billions of millions of US dollars, gold and whatsoever, of financial reserves have
07:18 been returned to Prigozhin.
07:20 No, as I said, legal consequence.
07:23 All of the actions of Wagner, I mean, the core of Wagner Group is centered around 5,000
07:29 to 6,000 troops, highly motivated, highly professional, former military intelligence,
07:37 military defense representatives, and so on.
07:42 And these 20,000 to 25,000 troops that we've been hearing about have been mostly gathered
07:48 from prisons while Wagner was actually fighting in Ukraine.
07:54 And as I said, this core of the Wagner Group is continuing its operations, and in fact,
08:00 it has expanded the terrain of its operations, now also being on the ground in Belarus, where,
08:08 as I said, Russian nuclear weapons have been, meanwhile, deployed, and the eastern flank,
08:14 and that means, of course, Poland specifically, are going to also undertake actions with regard
08:20 to what is happening in Ukraine.
08:21 All right, we're going to have to leave it there.
08:23 I'm so sorry to cut you short.
08:24 Vilina Chakarova, founder of the Geopolitical Consultancy, FACE.
08:27 Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.
