Heated debates among Russian military bloggers over the deaths of possibly dozens of Wagner Group mercenaries in Mali are highlighting discord and desolation within that community, says a researcher into Russian military propaganda.
The debates, prompted by a desert ambush last week in which a Wagner Group patrol was virtually wiped out, are appearing on a network of blogs known as the Z-channels, according to Ivan Filippov, author of the "All Quiet on ZzzzzzWestern Front” Telegram channel.
In an interview with Alexey Gorbachev of VOA’s Russian Service, Filippov described the Z-channels as “an extensive network … run by propagandists, people calling themselves ‘war correspondents,’ and other sincere supporters of Russian aggression.”
The blogs began appearing on the Telegram messaging app after Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to the independent Russian media outlet Meduza.
Many of the Z-channels have ties with Wagner and supported Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mini-mutiny against the Kremlin in 2023, weeks before he and the group’s co-founder and commander, Dmitry Utkin, died in a plane crash.
Shortly after Prigozhin’s death, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Defense Ministry to adopt Wagner troops, formalizing them as part of the military.
Filippov said some of the “Z-authors” have been highly critical of Wagner’s new commanders, suggesting that bad decision-making led to its scouts in Mali being ambushed and killed. They estimated the number of Wagner personnel killed by Tuareg separatists at between 20 and 80, making it the group’s worst single defeat in Africa.
“And one of the largest military Z-channels, ‘Rybar,’ which has more than a million subscribers … writes that the ‘Wagnerites’ neglected security measures and sent a detachment with three armored vehicles and several dozen people to a place where, according to their own words, there were more than 1,000 militants,” Filippov said.
“One important thing is that among the people who died was the administrator of a rather significant military Z-channel, connected precisely with Wagner, the Grey Zone channel,” he added.
Current Time TV, a Russian-language television and digital network led by RFE/RL in partnership with VOA, wrote in its Telegram channel daily newsletter on July 29 that Nikita Fedyanin, known by the call sign Bely, was the Grey Zone Telegram channel administrator killed in the Mali fighting.
According to Filippov, the loss of Fedyanin and Grey Zone is significant, because the channel played a leading role in the Z-channel ecosystem.
“[I]t was a pro-war channel, the author of which took direct part in the war and wished victory to Russian weapons,” he told VOA. “But it was one of the Z-channels that wrote a lot and very openly about the problems of the Russian army, about losses, and which was quite valuable precisely for research because Grey Zone could periodically find topics that other channels avoided.
“It is important to understand that the Z-space is structured in such a way that there are topics that people are afraid to write about, and everyone is waiting for who will write first, and then an avalanche [of messages] begins.”
In its July 29 daily newsletter, Current Time also reported that the July 25-26 battle in Mali took the life of “one of the most famous Wagner PMC commanders, Anton Elizarov (aka Lotus).”
It added, however, that “there are sources claiming that he was captured and has already been exchanged.”
Filippov told VOA that many of those discussing the deaths of the Wagner fighters in Mali attribute the group’s military debacle there to the new command.
“They say that the situation in Mali is connected with the fact that without Utkin, disarray and confusion began, the quality of command, the amount of money, the quality of equipment and many other things dropped sharply,” Filippov said.
He said the “Z-authors” look back at Wagner under the leadership of Utkin and Prigozhin as a “golden age,” while “now ‘Lotus’ is in charge, who many of them consider an incompetent leader.”
Wagner’s loyalty to Prigozhin and Utkin is on full display in a campaign that Z-bloggers launched asking volunteers to create superhero-styled avatars and emojis glamorizing their dead bosses.
The United Nations has said that under Prigozhin’s and Utkin’s leadership, the Wagner Group committed atrocities that may constitute war crimes, while fighting on behalf of Russia in Syria, Africa and Ukraine.
