Wagner Troops Are An Even Bigger Threat To Russia Now
The coup is over. Nobody in the Russian military trusts Wagner troops. There's rampant rumors that those troops who participated in the coup will eventually be rounded up and 'disappeared'. In these circumstances they have to be more than a bit terrified.
If Wagner troops refuse to return to the front lines in Ukraine and instead return to their homes, that would be a disaster for Russia. Prigozhin recruited a whole lot of violent criminals out of Russia's prison system. They were mainly used as cannon fodder. Thus they'd be the least likely to return to military service. In the chaos of the coup and it's ending it's safe to assume that a lot of them have already disappeared back into the civilian population.
Wagner signed up the worst offenders in Russia's prisons without discrimination. Murderers, rapists, armed robbers, gang members and so on. Also Russia has an underfunded, dysfunctional mental health system. The violently mentally ill generally were warehoused in prisons. Those psychopaths, sadists and other crazies were likewise recruited by Wagner. They also are free now.
I don't think I have to explain what happens as these worst of the worst are set loose upon Russian society. Russian internal security forces and police ranks have already been seriously thinned out by being conscripted to serve in Ukraine. Now those understaffed, overworked departments are going to be facing an epic crime wave. They will once again be facing many of the very scum and crazies they arrested and incarcerated in the past.
The Russian people have already suffered much. Most everyone has relatives, loved ones or friends who died in the Ukraine war. The economy's gone to hell. Unemployment is way up. Prices get higher all the time. Uncertainty for the future is a huge weight on everyone's mind. And now they'll suffer a horrific crime wave.
As a result anyone with a background of Wagner service will be viewed as a threat by regular Russians. They won't be able to get jobs. Many of their neighbors will ostracize them. Some of them and their families will be attacked and driven from their communities out of fear. Russian internal security services will be watching them as potential threats. This means that along with the criminals, many regular Wagner employees will be alienated, bitter and scared. That makes them dangerous. Very dangerous.
These are experienced combat troops. With no other options and the difficulty in escaping Russia, one of the very few paths open to them that allows them to use their skillset will be joining criminal organizations. The Russian and various ethnic mafias will embrace them with open arms. There's also a ton of very powerful military weapons available with the Ukraine war underway on Russia’s border. Weapons these new mafia recruits know all too well how to use. This will ramp up the violence and gang warfare between competing organized crime groups to new levels never seen before.
This is just another disaster that'll unfold inside Russia, further increasing instability. With a greatly weakened government the Kremlin's fear of loss of control will result in a harsh crackdown, as always. That'll mean more violence and probably an outright war between security services and organized crime groups.
There's already growing internal and external pressure on Russia that the government can't deal with. Their system can only take so much before it simply collapses. Add to that the many ethnic enclaves treated horribly by Moscow for generations that see their opportunity to declare independence. That includes the Chechens and many others. Ancient hatreds and more recent outrages to be avenged could lead to not just one, but many local civil wars.
This is another big pile of straw loaded onto the camel's back. It's the very last thing they need now. If I were Russian I'd be looking for any way I could to get out ASAP. Because survival in a failed, fracturing state is a Mad Max scenario.
Think pre-WWII China with competing warlords and their heavily armed militias, fighting each other for power while violently repressing and robbing the peasants. Public services cease to function. Disease, hunger, crime, desperation, civil unrest and worse become the order of the day. Or at the very least like the economic collapse in Argentina, a hyperinflation and crime 'Mad Max lite' version. We've seen this before so many times in human history.
And that leads us to how this affects us. The country with the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet may be soon to implode, fracture and turn into a Somalia-like hellscape. Nuclear weapons being sold off to the worst regimes or terrorist groups isn't out of the question. Or factions using them on each other inside Russia.
All this is something we're ill prepared for, if at all. It'd be questionable if we could help Russia with such a disaster, or if they'd even accept our help. When a collapse like that is underway it takes on a life of its own and nobody can stop it.
Once again, interesting times, indeed.