Irish Examiner view: Is it better the devil you know?

Wagner rebellion

Members of the Wagner Group military company sit atop of a tank on a street in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, prior to leaving an area at the headquarters of the Southern Military District. Picture: AP Photo

It is a mark of how deeply depressing the war in Ukraine appears to be when a committed gangster and blood-soaked warlord can be viewed, however briefly, as an ally in the campaign against Vladimir Putin. But any such thoughts about Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the so-called ‘Wagner Group’, can be dismissed in the blink of an eye.

Putin and Prigozhin are truly a case of Grim and Grimmer. Both hail from Leningrad, now St Petersburg, a city which once liked to think itself culturally, and socially, closer to the West than Moscow. Both have high self-esteem. 

Both share a taste for ruthless and violent action. But a couple who were once close allies are now enemies.

Prigozhin’s mercenaries are a throwback to the bandit groups who ravaged Europe during The Hundred Years War. They have earned a sinister reputation in Africa, the Middle East, and now Ukraine. Their emblem is a bloodstained sledgehammer. Their trademark is a brash and boastful use of social media full of noise and the stuff of war.

The US Treasury previously described Wagner as “a transnational criminal organisation ... implementing Kremlin policy”. 

It added that, in Mali and the Central African Republic, its personnel “have engaged in a continuing pattern of serious criminal activity, including mass executions, rape, child abduction, and physical violence”. 

EU foreign affairs and security experts describe them as “the praetorian guard of military dictatorships”.

Prigozhin has been offered shelter, for now, by Moscow’s client Belarus. But there is a more obvious final destination for him ... following the likes of Radovan Karadic and Slobodan Miloevic into the dock of the International Criminal Court at the Hague to be tried for offences against humanity.