Global Courant
This just doesn’t happen Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Especially in public.
The Russian president faces the biggest threat to his grip on power in all 23 years of leading the nuclear state. And it’s staggering to watch the veneer of total control he’s maintained all along—the ultimate selling point of his autocracy—crumble overnight.
It was both inevitable and impossible. Inevitable, since the war’s mismanagement had only meant a system as homogeneously closed and immune to criticism as the Kremlin could survive such a horrific setback. And impossible because Putin’s critics simply disappear, or fall out the window, or are brutally poisoned. But now the world’s fifth-largest army faces a weekend when fratricide—the aiming of their weapons at their fellow soldiers—is the only thing that can save the Moscow elite from collapse.
We are so accustomed to Putin being a master tactician that the opening salvos of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s disobedience have sometimes been judged a feint – an attempt by Putin to keep his generals on edge with a loyal henchman as their outspoken critic. But what we see today – with Putin forced to admit that Rostov-on-Don, his main military center, is beyond his control – detracts from any idea that this was run by the Kremlin.
However, it is likely that Wagner’s units have been planning this for some time. The justification for this uprising seemed urgent and spontaneous — an apparent air raid on a Wagner camp in the forest, which Russia’s Defense Ministry has denied — appeared hours after a remarkable dissection of the rationale behind the war by Prigozhin.
He was partially telling the truth about the disastrous start of the war: Russia was not threatened by the NATO attack and the Russians were not persecuted. The only deceit he maintained was to suggest that Russia’s top leadership was behind the invasion plan, and not Putin himself. Wagner’s troops rallied very quickly and quickly entered Rostov. That’s hard to do spontaneously in an afternoon.
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Perhaps Prigozhin dreamed he could push Putin to change the top of a defense ministry that has been openly berating the Wagner chief for months. But Putin’s address on Saturday morning has eradicated that prospect. This is now an existential choice for the Russian elite – between the president’s faltering regime and the dark mercenary Frankenstein who created it to do his dirty work, which has turned against its masters.
A fighter from the private mercenary group Wagner stands guard outside the headquarters of the Southern Military District in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on June 24, 2023. – Stringer/Reuters
An armored personnel carrier (APC) is seen on the streets of Rostov-on-Don on June 24. – Stringer/Reuters
It is also a moment of clarity for the Russian military. A few years ago, Prigozhin’s lenient criticisms would have led elite special forces in balaclavas to chase him away. But now he roams free, his senses open on the march to Moscow. Where are the FSB special forces? Decimated by the war, or not eager to take on their armed and experienced comrades in Wagner?
It is not the first time this spring that Moscow has looked weak. The drone attack on the Kremlin in May must have left the elite around Putin wondering how on earth the capital’s defenses were so weak. Days later, elite mansions were targeted by even more Ukrainian drones. Among the Russian wealthy, Friday’s events will dispel any question of questioning Putin’s grip on power.
Ukraine is likely to celebrate the disastrous timing of this uprising within Russian ranks. It will likely turn the course of the war in Kiev’s favour. But insurgencies rarely end in Russia – or anywhere else – with the results they set out to achieve. The removal of Tsar Nicholas II in Russia in 1917 turned into the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin and then the Soviet Empire.
As this rare Jacobean drama of Russian fundamental human fragility plays out, improvements are not inevitable. Prigozhin may not win and the foundations of Kremlin control may not collapse. But a weakened Putin can do irrational things to prove his strength.
He may not be able to accept the logic of defeat in the coming months on the frontline in Ukraine. He may not be aware of the great discontent among his own forces and lack proper control over their actions. Russia’s position as a responsible nuclear power rests on stability at the top.
Much more can go wrong than right. But it is impossible to imagine that Putin’s regime will ever return to its former heights of control from this point forward. And inevitably more turmoil and change is on the way.
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