London
Last Saturday was one of those days when Russia-watchers were glued to their smartphones. As armoured vehicles appeared on the streets of Moscow, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner forces took control of the city of Rostov-on-Don, a major logistics hub and key military headquarters for Russia’s war on Ukraine, which should have been one of the most highly secure sites in the country. Images appeared on social media of Prigozhin, who was able to breeze into the building with his gang of mercenaries in tow, effectively taking two senior generals hostage: Vladimir Alekseyev, First Deputy Head of the General Staff main Directorate and Yunus-bek Yevkurov, Deputy Defence Minister.
While Prigozhin was talking to the two generals, who were clearly squirming in their seats, a fast-moving Wagner convoy was seen surging towards Moscow, supported and applauded by the local population. En route, it found no military opposition, except some intervention by helicopters a little further up the road to Moscow, which they shot down. At the same time, reports on social media and images on YouTube showed workers frantically digging up major highways and bridges leading to Moscow, attempting to create obstacles and delays for the Wagner troops. The Kremlin clearly feared a coup attempt was in the offing. Then, just as suddenly, Prigozhin halted his advance, avoiding any violent confrontation. To everyone’s surprise, just hours after charging the Wagner owner with treason, President Vladimir Putin then announced that he had agreed to drop all charges and that Prigozhin was set to move to Belarus, whose strongman president, Alexander Lukashenko, had negotiated the deal. So what does this incident say about the stability of Putin’s regime, the future of Prigozhin and Wagner, and Russia’s war in Ukraine?
Vladimir Putin was clearly humiliated and weakened by Prigozhin’s insurrection. After all, strong leaders don’t threaten with curling lips one minute and change their minds the next. Putin’s mystique of an untouchable autocrat has suddenly been destroyed forever. Prigozhin was careful, however, not to criticise his master, instead aiming his ire at his arch-enemies, Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, assuming perhaps after months of ranting publicly, Putin agreed with him. “The Ministry of Defence is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were these insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block”, Prigozhin said in an explosive 30-minute video posted on his Telegram channel, firmly pointing the finger at Shoigu and Gerasimov.
Prigozhin’s outburst was linked to his growing fear of the subordination of Wagner to the Ministry of Defence. This month, Wagner’s prison recruitment pool of six-month contracts ended and Prigozhin withdrew his fighters from the front line. At the same time, Shoigu announced that Wagner troops must sign contracts with his Ministry by 1 July. At this point, Prigozhin became the proverbial “cornered rat”, with his own leverage reduced while Shoigu’s had strengthened. Subordination became a growing reality; Shoigu would now control Wagner’s financial flows, military hardware and deployment. How will this affect Wagner’s operations around the world, particularly in Africa, where many despots rely on Wagner to stay in power? Many observers believe that the Africa and Middle East deployments are unlikely to feel major repercussions, as there has always been a firm division between the Wagner-Ukraine and Wagner-Africa-Middle East units. Purges within them may take place to strengthen loyalties to the Kremlin and they may be renamed, but they are still very strategically and financially useful for Moscow. In a move designed to reassure allies in Africa that thousands of Wagner group fighters deployed on the continent will not be withdrawn, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, pledged that “instructors” and “private military contractors” would remain in the Central African Republic and Mali, the two countries in sub-Saharan Africa where Wagner has the biggest presence. Both are considered strategic prizes by the Kremlin, which considers them springboards to greater influence on the continent and a source of lucrative natural resources. This will inevitably be a test of loyalties for Wagner employees as these are mainly the old guard who weren’t recruited out of prisons and in fact, enjoy a special allegiance to Prigozhin.
Turning to the war in Ukraine, over the course of a single weekend, Prigozhin and Putin have jointly done what the Ukrainian military and its NATO allies have failed to achieve in 17 months of war—they’ve removed Russia’s single most effective fighting force from the battlefield. Without it, Vladimir Putin will now have to rely on the country’s weakened military. While the long-awaited counteroffensive by Kyiv’s forces seems yet to produce any major results, Wagner’s rebellion can only help them. “One of the things we should be watching very closely over the next few days”, says Laurie Bristow, who served as British ambassador to Russia from 2016 until 2020, “is whether morale in the Russian army takes a dive”. “But”, he added, “we should be very cautious not to think this means that Ukraine does not still face a long, hard fight”. Others agree.
“Wagner Group was for many months the most effective fighting force on the Russian side in Ukraine”, said an anonymous Central European Defence official last week, “if the group is disbanded and will no longer be deployed in Ukraine, it will considerably reduce Russia’s military offensive capacity”.
Stripping away the immediate causes, however, the mutiny was a symptom of the wider systemic failure of Putin’s regime. Late Putinism is characterised by a generalised frustration in its sclerotic nature and the lack of opportunity. Systemic institutional avenues for advancement, such as elections and the rule of law are controlled by insiders. Putin has always preferred to work with men he has known from his KGB days in the 1980s and his days in the St Petersburg government in the 1990s, which served as a launching point for his career.
These men were loyal because they could enjoy wealth and power only with Putin at the helm. Prigozhin, on the other hand, is a semi-outsider who simply wanted elevation within the Putin system in recognition of his military competence and his ability to generate combat capability. He has discovered that because his own efficiency put pressure on the highly inefficient Russian military, to the embarrassment of Shoigu and Gerasimov, the war has not been the opportunity he hoped to enter the ranks of the first tier in the Kremlin and be perceived as a powerful, relevant, and strategic player. So will President Vladimir Putin survive this insurrection? Is this the beginning of the end for him?
Whatever Prigozhin’s motives and intentions may have been, his rebellion has exposed an acute vulnerability of Putin’s regime—his contempt for the common man. There is now clear evidence that the majority of Russian casualties in the war are from the ethnic-minority parts of Russia, and very few from the glitterati of Moscow and St Petersburg, who continue to enjoy life to the full. The minorities have been dragged into a horrific war, which they are beginning to realise is a bitter colonial struggle, with little concern for their lives or well-being. Many soldiers still have no idea what they are fighting and dying for. Their hero is Yevgeny Prigozhin, a man who has highlighted the wretched conditions at the front and the miserable aloofness of an out-of-touch Putin, who appears to enjoy only the voices of those close to him, who give him only good news, which is usually phoney. Many believe that because of Putin’s indecisiveness and contempt the Kremlin was in deep trouble even before the coup, the first major challenge to the regime but probably not the last. The Prigozhin insurrection was a game-changer for the man in charge of Russia for the past 23 years. A post-Putin Russia could come much sooner than had commonly been expected just a week ago.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth. John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth.