What Really Happened in Putin's Russia last month ?

Update: An Epitaph to Wagner ?....

So Prighozin is no more – as we forecast in the original post (see text below this update.)

In some ways it’s surprising it took so long, given Putin’s initial reaction to the attempted coup in late June and his previous 'form'. One way or another,  the ‘Putin brand’ had to make it crystal clear that any opposition to its rule would attract the maximum penalty - or risk suffering a fatal loss of credibility.

There’s little doubt about the ultimate instigator of the ‘accident’ that destroyed Prighozin’s private jet – the only questions are ‘who actually carried out the hit ?’ and ‘how ?’

The answer to the ‘how’ question now appears to favour an on-board bomb rather than an overt shoot-down. A surface to air missile would in any case have been too easy for outside agencies to detect and ascribe blame for, and thus much less ‘deniable’ than a bomb. 

The ‘who’ question is a little more interesting – although Putin must have sanctioned the job at some point, it’s interesting to speculate whether he actively ‘pressed the button’ rather than just tacitly approving a hit which was then to be carried out at the FSB’s convenience when the opportunity arose.

There’s no doubt that Prighozin had many enemies – at least there we can agree with the verdict of pro-Kremlin commentators. Those protagonists with the biggest axe to grind were the Russian military top brass, notably Military Chief Valery Gerasimov and Defence Minister Sergei Shiogu, both of whom were sworn enemies of Prighozin. It wouldn’t therefore be surprising if they had orchestrated the planting of the device; they would have had little difficulty in doing so, given the rather brazen way Prighozin was still ‘strutting his stuff’ in the Federation.

The other, perhaps more important, question is ‘What of Wagner now’ ? 

Although the organisation still technically exists, its main fighting force has been carefully isolated in Belarus as a means of emasculation by Putin’s agencies. The Russian 'establishment' will now regard the remaining force as a potential loose cannon, which must either be brought back into the fold, or eliminated. That said, Wagner is still of potential use to Putin as a foreign agent in the field, particularly in Africa, where it has been a useful revenue earner for the Federation's now ailing economy. Now that the ‘serpent’s head’ has been effectively removed, there is little likelihood that Wagner will regroup and attempt to stage another coup anytime soon – for one thing, it simply doesn’t have the resources to stand against the combined might of the Russian military, however incompetent that organisation may have proved themselves to be in Ukraine. We shouldn't however discount the popularity Wagner, and particularly Prighozin himself, acquired amongst the Russian population, and Putin will have this very much in mind when devising his strategy going forward.

Time will tell, of course, but I would predict ‘business as usual’ for Putin – for the time being at least. 

His next big test will probably come next year when progress (or more to the point, the lack of it) in Ukraine over this coming winter and spring,  combined with a steadily weakening economy and a plummeting rouble is assessed. Any reliance he may be planning on a financial bailout by China could well be misplaced. The CCP has a major problem now in maintaining the growth which they must achieve if they are to keep their population fed, housed and under close control.

If Putin fails to make significant progress militarily or economically, and popular support wanes even further with falling living standards, the military may decide their prospects would be improved under new leadership….just who we might see replacing him is of course another question….

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Many of us in the west are likely to have been somewhat perplexed as to the apparent ‘goings on’ in the Russian Republic of late.

On June 24^th we were greeted almost ‘out of the blue’ with news of a rebellion by the Wagner group against Putin’s government, which culminated in the takeover of the western Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, home of the Russian Army’s Southern Strategic command. A march on Moscow then began amidst considerable public support in Rostov, and Putin promptly condemned the rebels, charging their leadership with treason and vowing the severest punishment for their disloyalty. Parts of the capital were quickly locked down and defences laid in the southern suburbs in preparation for the coming ‘battle’. Wagner troops appear to have got to within 200 km of Moscow’s outskirts before the whole thing was called-off, apparently through a deal mediated by the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko.

A reasonable reaction of anyone trying to digest this lot might be to assume they’d had an unpleasant nightmare induced by a surfeit of cheese the previous evening and hadn't quite woken up. The media, however, confirmed the news during the next few hours - and left us all guessing what might come next….

So what really happened – and why ?

On the face of it, Putin’s regime did suddenly appear to be crumbling in response to a popular uprising initiated by the Wagner group leader, Yevgeny Prighozin. A detailed and convincing account of the progress of the ‘rebellion’ as reported via western news sources is shown here, and for the sake of brevity I won’t attempt to duplicate the content. While it isn’t possible to verify everything that has emerged, I’ve no doubt that the majority of the reported facts are authentic - at least as far as we can judge.

Where the Russians are concerned, however, nothing is ever quite as it seems…so what really happened behind the scenes ?

Without doubt, this was a major event, and it is likely to have long-lasting repercussions. 

Based on the declaration of a rebellion and charges of treason being laid against its leader by the Russian military, on the face of it, one would be reasonable in asking the question “Why is Proghozin not already lying in an unmarked grave in Moscow with a bullet in his brain, given Putin’s televised statement of 24^th June vowing retribution for his crimes?”.

There are 2 possible explanations in my view:

1)     1) The whole thing was contrived as a ‘put up job’ and engineered by Putin to reinforce his assumed role as the ‘Saviour of Mother Russia’. By coming up with a bloodless solution to a staged rebellion and then appearing to bring Wagner back into the fold, he would be seen as the ‘hero who saved Moscow’. This would help bolster his flagging support amongst the population, and take their minds off the increasingly precarious economy, his military failure in Ukraine and the returning ‘body bags’.  All the ‘players’ involved were simply acting out this scenario at Putin’s direction.

2)     2) The acrimonious dispute between Prighozin and the Russian military top brass (Military Chief Valery Gerasimov and Defence Minister Sergei Shiogu) was real enough, and Prighozin’s exasperated ‘eruption’ on June 24^th did at one point threaten to plunge the country into anarchy. This situation was quickly turned to his advantage by Putin, who saw an opportunity to resurrect his deteriorating image and popularity by resolving the situation without further bloodshed.

Possibility 2) is probably the more likely – apart from anything else, executing a complex plan of the sort suggested in 1), which would have been necessary to guarantee the outcome Putin wanted, would have been extremely risky, and well-nigh impossible to conceal in these days of instant media coverage and pin-point hi-res satellite observation. It is also more characteristic of Putin’s previous behaviour patterns – as a consummate ‘artful dodger’ he has an uncanny ability to bend almost any situation to his advantage, and seems to have done so again here.

To find an explanation of how Putin managed his ‘little problem’, and what his reasoning behind it was, we need to focus on his two key operating principles. We can sum these up in two simple phrases:

“Divide and Rule” and “Keep them all guessing”.

Putin will always have worked on the assumption that once he had achieved a stranglehold on government and removed the obstacle of the democratic process, which he did in the late 2010s, the only entity that could actually displace him from power was the Russian military. His focus was therefore on ensuring the loyalty of his military ‘top brass’, while keeping on the lookout for any dissent and making sure that they were never allowed to get too powerful in their own right.

The advent of Prighozin’s Wagner group of mercenaries provided him with an excellent opportunity to keep the army in check while also establishing a force that could be used tactically in other areas of the world to enhance Russian influence (notably in Africa and the Syrian conflict) as well as latterly in his Ukraine 'special operation'.

To keep Prighozin himself in check, it was necessary for Putin to promote the natural existing rivalry between Wagner and the regular forces. This had already become increasingly acrimonious recently due to the failing Ukraine campaign and the heavy losses sustained by Wagner during the intense fighting over Bahmut. Far from trying to damp this down as another leader might do to promote unity, Putin brought the dispute to a head in late June by ordering Gerasimov to require all Wagner fighters to join the Red Army under contract, knowing full well that Prighozin could never accept it. 

Predictably, this did the job nicely, and led an already exasperated Prighozin to ‘blow’. It’s no coincidence that Putin refused to grant Prighozin’s subsequent angry demand (made shortly before the uprising) to remove his arch-enemies Gerasimov and Shiogu from their posts. An even angrier Prighozin, who had been confident that Putin would take his side, then forced Putin’s hand by staging his occupation of Rostov and starting his march on Moscow. Whether or not Putin had actually bargained for things to go this far, he quickly reacted by declaring the event treasonable, but then introduced his ‘master stroke’ of withdrawing the charge in return for a deal involving safe passage to ‘exile’ in Belarus.

It’s likely that this purported ‘exile’ was designed as a face-saving measure for Putin, and was never part of the real deal. Although Prighozin’s whereabouts are still hazy, several sightings in Russia have been reported, and Wagner still appear to be operating normally. Some of the Wagner forces do seem to have been transferred to Belarus, but this is probably largely for public consumption in Russia, and to keep NATO and particularly Poland on its toes.

 Putin will have realised that liquidating, or even just side-lining Wagner and its leader at this stage would leave a large hole in his Ukraine campaign, and would also remove its valuable check on the regular military leadership, so a ‘deal’ was in order which returned Wagner and its leader to active, but this time loyal, service. To avoid any possibility of Putin looking weak, though, it was necessary to keep things ‘under wraps’ until the situation stabilised and 'business as usual' could be resumed. Wagner is also an important economic bonus for the federation, and the deals that underpin its success in raising foreign exchange abroad have been dependent on Prighozin's contacts and negotiating skills, so he remains important to the war effort. Wagner's reputed overtures to the 'new management' in Niger demonstrate the organisation is still very much alive and at the 'sharp end' of Russian foreign policy in Africa. Prighozin himself appears to be still 'strutting his stuff' in various parts of the federation without any obvious restrictions as yet.

You can be sure, though, that Prighozin will now have had his ‘wings’ resoundingly ‘clipped’ and will be in no doubt as to what happens if he steps so much as a millimetre out of line in future. My guess is that retribution is likely to be swift for him in any event, as soon as he outlives his usefulness – Putin readily bears grudges and has 'form' for disposing of transgressors against his will - wherever they happen to be on the planet. He sees this as an essential part of maintaining his image as 'all powerful'. Prighozin's only hope of a long-term future is that Putin bows out before this happens and doesn’t agree with his successor to have Proghozin liquidated as part of his own 'exit deal'.

“Whatever next ? – You just couldn’t make it up…” I hear some of you say…..

Putin’s ‘second principle’ (i.e. keep them all guessing) will definitely continue to apply, so it’s anybody’s guess at this stage (including probably Putin’s own !).

My own best guess is that Putin, having already recognised that a much-strengthened NATO can never afford to abandon Ukraine, will have tacitly accepted that his plan of reconstituting the old Soviet empire is thus effectively in tatters, and will now be looking for a personal exit strategy. This will of course need to leave his personal billions (largely extracted from the Russian state) intact, and provide a safe haven for him and his clan in a favourable territory for his ‘retirement’. He is after all now in his 70s, and there are indications that his health may already be showing signs of failing.

This may not be an easy task for him - apart from the small matter of his indictment as a war criminal with an international arrest warrant, a more pressing internal problem he has is how to engineer a favourable and resilient succession….he will not want his legacy to the motherland to be a prolonged period of anarchy ‘a la 1990s’ or even worse. Thus, he must find a way to ensure that whoever takes over as president has adequate support, and the political power and ‘nouse’ to survive – as he has done – amidst the ‘nest of vipers’ that is today’s Russian political hierarchy….

Time will tell whether he can manage to engineer all this and do so before fate takes a hand in his own case.

We in the West can only hope for a peaceful and orderly transition as the ‘end game’, with a new incumbent being prepared to negotiate a favourable settlement of the Ukraine conflict in return for the chance to ‘rehabilitate’ Russia into the international fold and get sanctions lifted.

We need to be careful what sort of transition we wish for here…we might well get someone even worse at the helm in Russia if Putin's regime collapses too precipitately. Putin at least, for all his threats and bluster about going nuclear, has never really shown any signs of actually doing so. The next incumbent might not show as much restraint….better the devil you know, perhaps ? - for now at least, I think.

Even if things don’t ‘go nuclear’, and Putin manages to hang on or bow out peacefully, in the short term the conflict in Ukraine is likely to be prolonged and bloody.

One thing is certain – the West must resist the temptation to abandon Ukraine to its fate – the stakes for Europe as a whole are just too high. Fortunately, NATO has now woken up to the threat from the East and apart from a few disputes about the practicalities, the recent Vilnius summit showed a remarkable degree of unanimity on the need to continue support for ‘as long as it takes’.

There are still those however in the G7 home countries that criticise continued military support on economic grounds – they need to remember that the Ukrainian military, despite their valiant efforts to date, are totally dependent on a continuous supply of western military hardware to survive against the Russian behemoth, despite all its evident inefficiencies. Illicit sales of their oil and gas are still providing more than enough currency to keep the flow of ordnance from the likes of Iran and other 'sympathetic' sources.  Without continued full scale western support, Ukraine would quickly become another Belarus on Europe’s border with internal chaos and a vicious guerrilla war against a Russian occupying force which has already established its credentials for brutality.

The consequence of a successful Russian occupation of the whole country would be that a significant proportion of Ukraine’s 40 million population would attempt to flee westwards into Eastern Europe together with a large element of hardened military fighters, creating a situation across the continent reminiscent of the turmoil of the late 1940s in the aftermath of WW2. The refugee efflux alone would make the scenes at Kiev railway station in Feb ’22 look like a teddy bears’ picnic……

The effect of that scenario on the world economy is not a prospect anyone would want to contemplate ... and certainly well worth a few extra billions’ worth of ordnance per month to avoid.

First published 13.7.23