What Next for the Wagner Group?

A jet believed to belong to Yevgeny Prigozhin landed in Belarus on Tuesday, but the future of the Wagner Group he leads remains up in the air.

An Embraer Legacy 600 linked to the businessman hit the tarmac southwest of Minsk at 7.37 a.m. local time, Belarusian monitoring group the Hajun Project reported.

It follows a deal mediated by Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko to end Prigozhin's march on Moscow on Saturday which the businessman said two days later was aimed at the Russian military leadership's war effort in Ukraine rather than ousting President Vladimir Putin.

Prigozhin also wanted to retain autonomy over the group whose troops were told to sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD). The details of that stipulation, and other terms of the deal, are unclear but they include criminal charges against Prigozhin being dropped and his troops would not face legal action either.

"Co-optation of Prigozhin is unlikely, as it has already failed," Leon Hartwell, a senior associate at the London School of Economics think tank LSE IDEAS, told Newsweek. "However, co-opting the Wagner Group into the regular Russian military remains a possibility."

Putin appealed on Monday to Wagner commanders and servicemen which indicated the Kremlin's intent to organize them into the Russian MOD structure, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

This could see them broken up to reinforce existing military formations, although Prigozhin's previous criticism of his troops being used as fodder casts doubt on whether his commanders would subordinate to regular Russian military command.

"While absorbing mutineers into the regular forces carries significant risks, given the dynamics on the Ukrainian battleground, Russia requires Wagner's manpower and experience," said Hartwell. "Not co-opting Prigozhin also carries risks. He could continue to make statements that contradict official Russian propaganda."

Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported on Monday that Belarusian authorities are building new camps in the Mogilev region to house the Wagner Group fighters who may follow Prigozhin. Even if Putin presents Belarus as a haven for Wagner fighters, it could be a "trap" as the Kremlin will view those personnel as traitors, the ISW said.

Africa and Bakhmut

Whatever happens to Wagner, the mercenary group has been extremely useful for the Kremlin, not just in Ukraine, where it spearheaded the fight for the Donetsk city of Bakhmut.

Before Putin's full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, Wagner's core business had been to offer protection to foreign governments, such as the Central African Republic or Mali.

Mystery used to surround the links between Wagner and the Kremlin but in a sign of how out in the open those ties are now, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday the mercenary group would remain in Africa. Putin said Tuesday that the Wagner Group had received $1 billion worth of government money.

"The Wagner Group constitutes a major element of Russia's security presence in the continent and gives Moscow access to Africa's rare earth minerals and other critical resources," Vuk Vuksanovic, an associate at LSE IDEAS, told Newsweek.

"As such, Wagner Group will continue to operate both in Ukraine and internationally, most likely under tighter command from the Russian Ministry of Defense," he said.

"While in organizational terms, this transformation will be challenging, it will be much easier to do in the sense that Wagner Group has always been tightly connected with the state," he said, adding that even if Prigozhin is gone, the Wagner Group "is there to stay in Ukraine and other security theatres."

"The Russian government does not want to give up the assets that the Wagner Group provides it," Vuksanovic said.

There is no legal status for private military companies in Russia which is why it is assumed that Wagner was established in close cooperation with the Russian foreign military agency (GRU), Marie Dumoulin, the director of the wider Europe program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Newsweek.

"Whether Prigozhin can maintain Wagner's activities abroad will be crucial in understanding his relationship with the Russian leadership," she said.