No matter how the current Ukrainian war ends, one thing is clear - the former balance of power in the Caucasus with Russia's total domination and its neo-imperial policy through support for separatism will no longer exist. However, the main risk for the countries of the region, including Georgia, may be the unpredictable development of the situation in Russia itself. Including a quite possible distemper and collapse of the Russian Federation.

The danger is, above all, that forces have appeared in the Russian politics, which do not recognize any laws - neither international nor national, nor any boundaries. We are talking about PMCs - private military companies, and especially the Wagner PMC. The mercenaries of this PMC, most of whom are former criminals, do not care where to kill people - in Ukraine or in Africa.

The base of the Wagner PMC, incidentally, is located in close proximity to the borders of Georgia - in the Krasnodar Territory. In case of disintegration of Russia, there is a huge risk that the "operations" of the Wagner PMC could become the territory adjacent to its "base" region.

The Wagner PMC and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, have brought "African" political mores to the Russian Federation. In Africa, clashes of various factions within countries in the struggle for power and resources and the right to exploit those resources in the interests of former colonialists and multinational corporations are commonplace.

More recently, turmoil has engulfed Sudan, where clashes have erupted between the government armed forces of Sudan and the country's largest armed outfit, the Rapid Reaction Force (RRF). Most interestingly, the head of the Rapid Reaction Force, Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hamidti, has been working very closely with the Wagner PMC, which has been active in gold mining in the country since 2017, setting up Prigozhin-controlled Meroe.

After the outbreak of civil war in Sudan, the "Sudanese mores" with disobedience to his own national Ministry of Defence, Prigozhin began to transfer to Russia as well.  Information warfare between the Wagner PMC and the Ministry of Defense has been going on for a long time, the PMC regularly accuses the military department of "under-delivery of ammunition.  Recently, Yevgeny Prigozhin said that the Wagner PMC will not follow the order of Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and sign any contracts with the Ministry of Defence.

So it turns out that in Russia, a nuclear power, there is a completely "autonomous!" army represented by PMCs, not subordinate to the Ministry of Defence in any way. And that is almost a 100% guarantee of commencement of armed hostilities inside the Russian Federation after the Ukrainian war is over. Moreover, no matter how it ends in victory (which is unlikely) or defeat. It is possible that an internal armed conflict will start before the end of the Ukrainian war. It is also possible that the Wagner PMC will start "its" military operations outside the Russian Federation without formally involving Russia as a state.

It begs the question: how come that in a historically "ultra-centralized" country such as Russia, there emerged an all-powerful PMC "Wagner", which has interests not only in Russia, but also in many countries around the world, especially in Africa. Why did the Kremlin leadership and the Russian security services, suppressing any autonomy, especially in the field of force, "allowed" such structure to emerge and allow it to "hit" the Ministry of Defense in conditions of war? A well-known Russian blogger Anatoly Nesmiyan partially tried to answer this question:

"Wagner is not just a dashing band of condottieri but a semi-systemic structure, most likely subordinate to the GRU. At one time, the ODESSA project was launched on the basis of Otto Skorzeny's structures (which were a complete analogue of the GRU structure, only not in the army but in the SS version), which created a mechanism for the withdrawal of huge funds from the Third Reich and the output of SS representatives in the event of Germany's collapse. The project was deeply covert and not even all leaders of the Third Reich were privy to it. So the story is quite identical - it is in today's "holes of the world" that it is quite possible to create structures in case of regime collapse. Especially in a situation where things are going strictly in that direction.

And of course there has to be someone in charge of the whole project. It is unlikely to be just one person, but Prigozhin's position in this structure is undoubted, which makes him a unique figure in the current landscape….

At one time, Prigozhin reacted extremely harshly to the reconnaissance mission of three Russian journalists, whose trip to the Central African Republic was clearly organised to understand the size of the jungle-built economy. The immediate reaction and the exemplary extermination of Jemal's reconnaissance team discouraged a repeat attempt. It has now been decided to act more systematically.

Now Prigozhin does not seem to want to be just the custodian of the master trillions. He is creating his own personal social lift, which is what is stressing the Russian upper class." - Anatoly Nesmiyan writes.

Whether this is actually the case, as Anatoly Nesmiyan writes, is hard to say. It is quite possible that the Kremlin leaders do not think about the collapse of their regime yet but want to build a "shadow empire" in resource-rich Africa "in parallel" with the neocolonial French African empire. And on roughly the same principles, or rather in the absence of any principles and laws.  But there is no doubt that in order to achieve their goals the Wagner PMC will not stop at any crimes. The aforementioned tragic fate of journalist Orkhan Gemal's group confirms this.

For dirty and lawless purposes the Wagner PMCs can be used not only in Africa. Almost openly about the desire to hire Wagner PMCs to "save Artsakh", say the Armenian Revashists. They may be preparing plans for gradual transfer of Wagner mercenaries and weapons to Karabakh on the eve of withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers. This means another instability factor could emerge in the South Caucasus.

George Kvinitadze