‘We’re no mutineers’: Three years after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march on Moscow, Wagner veterans still can’t agree on what it meant

“We’re not mutineers, we didn’t betray anyone, and we weren’t out to overthrow the president”

Alexei, 51

I worked as a driver. My only army experience was my conscript service; I knew how to shoot and handle a weapon. I have plenty of friends who are contract soldiers. In 2022, I went to the enlistment office, wanting to sign up too. They told me: “Not needed for now. You’re too old.” I was 47 at the time.

I’d looked into Wagner a bit, and I decided to test what else I was capable of. My wife was against it, but I insisted and signed a six-month contract. The company bought me a ticket, and I arrived at the training center in Molkino.

Prigozhin used to come there. He personally oversaw everything, made sure the soldiers had everything they needed. He’d think nothing of walking into the mess hall, grabbing a plate of porridge with canned stew, and sitting down next to any fighter. On that visit, a couple of guys told him they’d run out of garlic and onions. Two hours later, half a KamAZ truckload of onions and garlic showed up at the mess hall. He tried to grant every request right away, or as fast as he could, so his fighters wouldn’t go without, even in something so small.

From the training ground, they sent me across the line [to the front], to Bakhmut. I served as a KamAZ driver, but everyone went on the assaults, and so did I. I carried personnel, brought up ammunition and food, and hauled the “200s” [the dead] and “300s” [the wounded] off the battlefield. Everyone’s scared, but everyone came to do the job.

Yevgeny Viktorovich came out to the positions, too. I saw him there four times, but never spoke with him personally. He never hid. He’d come, size up the situation. He’d walk up to a group, shake everyone’s hand, ask how things were going, how morale was, how their health was. He took an interest in every man’s fate, you might say.

The guys treated him like their old man. They still call him “Pops” even now. It didn’t matter who you were, he was always easy to talk to. Just a regular guy — a real father to everyone.

We heard about the “march of justice” three or four days out, maybe a week. Rumors started going around the units. But nobody said anything about us marching on Moscow with our demands. Just: there’ll be a march, get the vehicles ready. We followed orders. Orders aren’t up for debate.

Everyone felt good about the march; we wanted to get through to the top brass, to find out why our boys were being killed while the Defense Ministry held back ammunition. How does that work? The second-best army in the world, and we don’t have ammunition.

The morning of June 23 — reveille, breakfast. We loaded ammunition and spent half the day forming up the columns. This was outside Luhansk. I didn’t see Prigozhin there, because there were so many people. They told us we were heading to Rostov, and from there on to Moscow, to meet up with the commander-in-chief and talk about the ammo shortage and guys getting killed for nothing.

We set out. I was in the column behind the wheel of a KamAZ. We rolled into Rostov. People were bewildered to see troops. Then everyone figured it out and started supporting us, bringing food and water, even though we had plenty of everything.

Later, back in civilian life, we saw someone on TV claiming that we’d disarmed 180 conscripts and contract soldiers at the border. None of that is true. We told them we had no intention of fighting our own people. And they told us the same — and let us through. It would be absurd to fight your own people in the middle of Russia.

Out of Rostov, they sent my group to hold the highway toward Voronezh. A chopper went down right in front of me. As far as I know, the pilot of one of the helicopters was convinced we were a large Ukrainian force. The crews got fed a lie, so they came down on us. [I was told] that pilot figured out the order was criminal and that he had the right to refuse it.

On the way to Voronezh, out of nowhere they ordered us to turn around and pull back to a temporary base in the Luhansk region. That’s where we turned on the TV and found out the Belarusian president had stepped in and convinced Yevgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin] to stop. They forced him to submit to the “Min” [the Defense Ministry].

The names they called us in the news (we still get called this stuff even today): traitors to the country, mutineers. We’re not mutineers, and we didn’t betray anybody; we weren’t trying to overthrow the president. We support the president — we just wanted to figure out why the ammo deliveries were being held up.

Then the president offered Wagner’s fighters a choice: sign a contract with the Defense Ministry, go to Belarus, or scatter to their homes. For about two weeks, we handed over our temporary bases, vehicles, and other equipment to the Defense Ministry, and then we crossed into Belarus. The instructors stayed behind there, sharing their combat experience with the Belarusian army special units, training them.

In early August, most of the guys went home. So did I. I didn’t get mixed up with the ministry, because the contract you sign is for a year, it renews automatically, and you go home either disabled or in a box. Either that, or you serve until the end of the special military operation — and when that’ll be, I can’t even guess.

I never bought this whole show [Prigozhin’s death] from the start. Honestly, everyone I was out there with — nobody believes it. The commanders never rode in the same car or flew on the same plane. But our media said they’d been playing with a grenade on the plane and doing drugs. I don’t believe it, and I never will. And Yevgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin] used to say: “Don’t ever believe it until you see my head.” Guys come back from Africa saying they saw him over there. But that’s just rumors.

People get used to war. When I came home, I couldn’t sit still. I was drawn back there like crazy. I can’t explain the feeling. You just get up in the night and shout: “I’m going back!” I’d tell my wife: “Tomorrow I’m packing up and leaving.” But I got over it. I got busy with my grandson, odds and ends, summertime, the dacha; I’m back to working as a driver. Little by little, the feeling started to fade. Especially since the buddies who got involved with the Defense Ministry were brought back in coffins a month later. After that, I didn’t want any part of it.

But if Yevgeny Viktorovich turned up and built an army like Wagner again, I’d join up under his command without hesitation.

”We all knew this was a betrayal of the homeland. We weren’t headed toward the enemy, right?”

Oleg, 49

I have Ukrainian roots: my mother and grandmother are from Zhytomyr. I myself was in Ukraine in the 1980s, and I saw neo-fascists. Even back then they were walking around with swastikas on their armbands. That’s probably what pushed me [to go to war].

You name it, I’ve done it. My life’s been quite something, really. I did martial arts, boxing. In the 1990s, I was in a crew [an organized crime group]. There were all kinds of scrapes. I got wounded in civilian life, too. From the last time I got shot, there’s still buckshot in my skull. From 2017, I worked as a sales rep, then as head of sales.

In March 2023, I joined the private military company. My family didn’t want to let me go, but it’s pretty much impossible to talk me out of anything. Once I set my mind on something, I go for it.

Training in Molkino lasted 21 days. They taught us to lay mines and handle various weapons: a grenade launcher, a Kalashnikov, a DShK. I’m an assault trooper — I went straight in as “meat.”

On one of the assaults we made it to a basement, sat there for two days and couldn’t get out, because a tank was shelling us. We scrounged our own food and water: whoever we “200‘d” [killed], we’d take his rations. Nobody counts the dead. You just shoot at the enemy; I always had an RPG. How many are there, five or one — why bother checking?

Discipline in Wagner was top-notch. They’d beat you half to death and throw you in a pit for two or three days. I saw it myself. One guy had his little finger chopped off for falling asleep on watch. I wasn’t punished much. Just once, the commander gave me a whack on the legs with a stick because we’d been ordered to take a five-story building by midday and didn’t until evening. I think the punishment was fair.

Nobody clued us in that any of this [the march on Moscow] was in the works. The evening before, with a day’s notice, they gathered us and said everyone was to be in full combat readiness the next day. The commander said the job was to get to Moscow, and that it had to happen. Why? Mainly to keep order, he said. Basically just vague talk, nothing concrete.

They didn’t take everyone on the march, because the holding force had to stay put — somebody had to keep an eye on them; they had their own job to do.

There was an unpleasant moment as we were setting out from camp. Everyone understood we’d be declared enemies of the people and that going back to a normal civilian life would be impossible. But there was no turning back by then. We all shared those feelings, but we only talked about them once we were back at camp. If anyone had refused before the march, they’d have been “zeroed out” [killed] without a word. There were guys who deserted on the way to Moscow. I know for a fact they weren’t caught.

The column stretched about 50 kilometers [30 miles]: PAZ buses, jeeps, ordinary minivans and sedans, Ural trucks, and KamAZes. As we traveled, they brought us up to speed in broad strokes. Each group got only the information it needed to carry out the task assigned to it. My group provided security for five armored vehicles. We were told not to touch civilians under any circumstances, but not to stand on ceremony with the military if they turned aggressive.

We had about 200 to 300 kilometers [roughly 125 to 185 miles] left to Moscow. We had Igla missiles and anti-aircraft missile systems for taking down helicopters and planes. As we were moving in the column [in the Voronezh region], a Defense Ministry helicopter started firing on us. A civilian car got caught in the crossfire — there were people inside — but they didn’t show that on TV. In a split second, our unit decided to shoot the helicopter down. It crashed about 200 meters [roughly 655 feet] from us, and we moved on. We shot down a second helicopter three or four hours later.

When the order came to turn around, I felt relieved. So did the guys marching with me in the column — about 80 of us. We all knew this was a betrayal of the homeland. I mean, we weren’t headed toward the enemy, right? But if you’re going against Shoigu, you’re a traitor anyway.

[After the mutiny] we were told at first that we were all going to Belarus and would continue training there. A week later everything changed: they said only the instructors would go there, and anyone who wanted to keep [serving in Wagner] would go back to civilian life, rest up, get a passport, and fly off to the African republics. I didn’t want to. The [Africans] never did me any harm.

I went home, but in March 2024 I left [for the war] again — I decided to see for myself what kind of mess was going on in the Defense Ministry. I already knew about it, and I knew the contract was open-ended, too. I just wanted to find out firsthand. And besides, I’m not afraid anymore.

I served on the Zaporizhzhia front. Same as before, I went on the assaults. To get out of the assaults, you have to pay the commanders. And why would I hand over my own money? Better to just go on the assault.

I was in the thick of it for all of two months. At the end of May, I got hit by an RPG — wounds to my leg, arm, neck, and head. To avoid paying me for the injury, they discharged me for “general illness.”

When I got home, I showed my wife a couple of videos of what’s really happening out there: the “meat assaults,” the idiotic orders from the Defense Ministry. Taking the town of Staromaiorske cost about 1,500 men over three weeks. My wife says: “Don’t show this to anyone else. Nobody’s going to go easy on you.” And the people [who’ve been to the front] have thousands of clips like that.

After my injury, I tried several times to sign a contract, but nobody would take me. I’m drawn back there. That’s where I belong, and the people are real. Even a “kashnik” [a recruited convict] will never leave you behind — he’ll drag you out. Where are you going to meet people like that here?

I love my homeland very much. The state? No. But the pot’s already boiling. We went at them [Ukraine] first, yes. But hardly any of those guys are left, and if our reinforcements don’t show up, they’ll come for us next. So we have to grind it out to the end to keep them off our land.

For some people, Elvis Presley is still alive. I don’t think Prigozhin is alive. You have to be a realist. If it weren’t for the march, Prigozhin probably wouldn’t be alive anyway. He’d done what he set out to do — he built Wagner. The authorities had no further use for him, the way I see it. Because you can’t have two tsars. In the eyes of someone like [Valery] Gerasimov [the chief of the Russian General Staff], men like that discredit the authorities, because they expose their helplessness.