There’s a good deal of poetic justice weaving through the surreal coup attempt over the weekend that enveloped Russia in chaos and posed a grave threat to Vladimir Putin’s 23-year grip on power.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the paramilitary Wagner Group that marched within 124 miles of Moscow before stopping, is Putin’s creation. Once a convicted thief who served prison time, Prigozhin won Putin’s friendship early on. With the Russian leader’s patronage, Prigozhin earned billions as the Kremlin’s caterer, founder of the Internet Research Agency trolling group that meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and head of the Wagner mercenaries that did Putin’s dirty work in military conflicts in Syria, several African nations, and, of course, Ukraine.
What Putin never counted on was his faithful partner-in-bloodshed going from minion to mutineer.
Much is still unknown about what motivated the rebellion, why Prigozhin suddenly aborted it and why after labeling Prigozhin a traitor, Putin allowed his longtime henchman to flee in exile to Belarus. But this much is clear. The chaotic weekend events that stunned and captivated the world emerged from the chaos that is Putin’s Russia.
Putin turned his nation into a seamy trough of corruption and kleptocracy, and both he and Prigozhin have spent years feeding from that trough. In such conditions, turncoats emerge.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell summed it up well on Monday. “The monster that Putin created with Wagner, the monster is biting him now,” Borrell said. “The monster is acting against his creator.”
Indeed, Putin is paying a stiff price. How he is viewed both internationally and domestically has been severely compromised. Russians have had to withstand his decimation of civil society, the rule of law and any semblance of political opposition, along with his commandeering of media at all levels. But they always felt they could count on Putin for one thing — stability.
The weekend rebellion shattered that belief.
Putin looked surprisingly indecisive and ineffectual as the crisis unfolded. As Prigozhin’s convoy of tanks and armored vehicles seized the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, the hub of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, local Russians greeted Wagner soldiers with the kind of giddy exuberance a victorious army gets when returning home. The elite in the Kremlin watched helplessly, and Putin must have been fuming.
Prigozhin’s “march of justice” convoy as he called it continued northbound on the M-4 highway largely unabated. Then it suddenly stopped, before it could reach Russian troops positioned to defend the capital. Prigozhin said he stopped because he believed Russian blood was about to be spilled by fellow Russians, and ordered his Wagner troops to head back to their field camps.
In a taped address to the nation Saturday, Putin was clearly incensed by the events, declaring Prigozhin and his men traitors and vowing, “We will protect both our people and our statehood from any threats, including internal betrayal.” Then, to the shock of Russians and people around the world, Putin, with brokering help from Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, hammered out a deal that allowed Prigozhin to seek refuge in neighboring Belarus.
Simply put, Prigozhin threatened and Putin blinked.
What happens to Prigozhin now is anyone’s guess. It’s not even clear he is actually in Belarus, though on Monday he released a recorded statement on the messaging app Telegram in which he denied pursuing Putin’s overthrow and insisted his actions were aimed at the Russian military leadership’s poor treatment of Wagner Group soldiers, along with the Russian military’s bid to put Prigozhin’s fighters under government control. That may have spelled an end to the massive amounts of cash Prigozhin was getting from the Kremlin as Wagner’s chief, and perhaps that’s a key driver behind the mutiny.
Though the Kremlin said neither Prigozhin nor his soldiers would face any charges, on Monday Russian news services reported that a criminal investigation into Prigozhin and the coup attempt remained open. The weekend turmoil could spell the end of the Wagner Group, or in the very least, its role in Ukraine. All of this, meanwhile, works to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s advantage — the Wagner Group was responsible for Russia’s sole battlefield victories since last summer, in the destroyed eastern city of Bakhmut and in the village of Soledar. Over the weekend, Ukrainian forces claimed they had made progress in Bakhmut against Russian troops that had replaced Wagner soldiers.
President Joe Biden and other Western leaders will watch closely just how weakened Putin is as a result of the rebellion. They will hope it leads to sustained successes by Ukrainian fighters that up until now have outfought Russian forces despite lacking the troop strength and air power that Putin enjoys.
But Biden and the West can also relish that the biggest instigator of Russia’ gravest crisis in decades was Putin himself. He charged forward with an unprovoked, illegal invasion of Ukraine that turned his nation into a pariah state, and then as commander-in-chief, allowed his military to devolve into an irreparable state of dysfunction, both on and off the battlefield. And as a dangerous feud between Russian military leaders and Prigozhin simmered for months, Putin idly stood by.
In the end, Putin may change his mind and haul in Prigozhin on treason charges, or perhaps do something much worse to his former caterer. The world hasn’t forgotten what happened to Alexander Litvinenko or Sergei Skripal. But if Putin really wants to pin blame on someone, he should find a mirror.
