Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[ColonelCassad] A photo of Prigozhin appeared in some field camp. Made July 12th. The choice is actually not great - either the field camp of PMC "Wagner" on the territory of the LPR (where the transfer of heavy equipment and weapons of the RF Armed Forces took place), or new camps that were urgently erected on the territory of Belarus through the Ministry of Defense of Belarus.
Belarusian sources today confirmed the start of the transfer of Wagner PMC to Belarus. The transfer is proceeding without heavy weapons - all of them returned to the Ministry of Defense, which even before the North Military District supplied weapons and ammunition to Wagner PMC.
The future role of Prigozhin in the current realities is rather vague. On the one hand, the criminal case against him was closed and he retained some positions in the country. On the other hand, nobody forgot anything. The fact of the rebellion will remain in history. Putin in an interview yesterday clearly shared this moment - heroism at the front is one thing, but the June 24 rebellion is quite another.
Prigozhin has stated Wager will be ready for combat operations by August 5th.
Peskov today supplemented Putin's yesterday's interview, saying that PMC Wagner currently has no legal status, and the Kremlin does not consider it appropriate to publish additional information about Putin's meeting with the leaders of PMC Wagner.
The issue of the future of PMC "Wagner" in the legal sense, will be considered as part of the overall process of considering the legal status of PMCs in Russia. So, it is very likely that in the autumn the State Duma will begin discussing some law on the legal status of PMCs, which now either exist in the gray zone of the legal field, or mimic private security companies. Now conflicting signals are coming from the Duma - some deputies say that the law is not needed, others say the opposite. what is needed. The Kremlin has yet to give a definite answer.
It will be interesting to see how the position of various departments on the law on PMCs has changed in the light of the attempted military mutiny on June 24th.
Previously, the Russian Foreign Ministry supported the adoption of a law on the status of PMCs, while the FSB and the RF Ministry of Defense were against the adoption of such a law. Since then, the situation has worsened as the number of PMCs in Russia has increased. The authorities recognize the existence of this conflict, but so far they are in no hurry to reveal the cards on the issue of its elimination in one way or another. So we just wait and there it will already be clear whether Wagner will repeat the fate of Blackwater.
From my personal point of view, if PMCs exist in our country one way or another and most likely will continue to exist, then it is better for them to exist within the legal field with prescribed rights and obligations than outside the legal field, when formally non-existent structures, exist for themselves and are provided by the state for huge sums (as everyone could see, if we take the amount of state subsidies for Wagner, it is quite clear that without these funds PMC Wagner in its strongest form 2022-2023 could not exist as a private company - it simply would not have had so much money for this).
The absence of a law, while maintaining the practice of using PMCs, will simply lead to the fact that they will continue to operate in a gray legal zone, where the state, taking into account the experience of June 24, will strengthen actual control over their activities.