Regime change in Russia has been a key objective of the globalist wing of American foreign policy since the 2014 Maidan coup, which was carried out at the direction of then-Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, now Undersecretary for Policy at the US State Department. President Joe Biden hailed calls for regime change on March 26, 2022, declaring that Putin “cannot stay in power” after invading Ukraine on February 24.
The Wagner Group mutiny this weekend sparked a flurry of commentary across editorial offices and social media suggesting that the Russian president might be ousted after all. After Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin accepted the deal proposed by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, called off his march on Moscow and made his way to Moscow’s closest ally, Putin was still in power.
But the political sand has shifted towards Russia’s ultra-nationalist right, which poses serious strategic risks, including a greater likelihood of using tactical nuclear weapons.
Russia has turned to a bad form of nationalism since the Maidan, which Nuland and her colleagues saw as the prelude to overthrowing Putin. The US-backed coup against President-elect Viktor Yanukovych threatened Russia’s holdings in Crimea, home of its Black Sea fleet, and led to Russia’s annexation of the peninsula, which has been Russian territory since the reign of Catherine the Great.
Prigozhin reflects a growing consensus within the Russian armed forces and key sections of civil society that Putin was a pushover in the face of Western plans against Russia. That consensus includes Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, whom Putin persuaded to send troops to defend Moscow against Prigozhin’s mutinous march on the capital. Kadyrov and Prigozhin were allies against Putin’s military leadership and called for more aggressive and decisive action in Ukraine by what was perceived as a cautious Kremlin.
Remarkably, Prigozhin managed to assemble a military column for more than a week without Putin’s knowledge – despite press reports that Western intelligence services were observing this. Even more remarkable is that there were no Russian forces between Moscow and Rostov when the convoy got within 200 kilometers of Moscow, except for a few helicopters, three of which were shot down by Wagner’s forces.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group, speaks in Bakhmut in a video released earlier this year. Photo: Telegram channel / @concordgroup_official
Most notably, Putin had to urge Prigozhin’s ally Kadyrov to defend the capital before reaching a compromise with Lukashenko that dropped all charges against the mutineers. It seems that Russia’s regular military stood by and let Prigozhin send a message to Putin.
The ultra-nationalist “Greater Russia” current in Moscow believes Putin is soft on the West. In 2000, Putin applied to then-President Bill Clinton for Russia to join NATO and was turned down. He received a pledge from Washington not to intervene in Ukraine, which the Bush administration violated when it backed the 2004 Orange Revolution.
And he struck a deal with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to ensure the security and rights of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking minority through the Minsk II accords, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy canceled in 2022 with Anglo-American backing.
The Prigozhin mutiny now makes Putin dependent on Russia’s extreme right. Should he be overthrown, his successor will not be the liberal democrat Washington dreams of, but a Russian nationalist who seeks absolute victory in Ukraine, even if that will likely require the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
There is no significant liberal current in Russia. But the Russian ruling elite is producing a powerful group of right-wing nationalists who dream of a revived Greater Russia. Disturbingly, this current is merging from several disparate groups.
These include Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, “Eurasian” philosopher Alexander Dugin, popular TV presenters Vladimir Soloviev and Dmitry Dibrov, Chechen leader Kadyrov, Moscow Patriarchate TV channel SPAS, and the neo-Tsarist Union of the Russian People.
Among them are former Russian flag officers forcibly retired by Putin and Wagner boss Prigozhin, who has lamented Putin’s military timidity and the poor performance of his handpicked commanders. What holds this motley coalition together is the idea that Russia must defeat Ukraine at all costs and that the war can only end in victory on the western borders of the former Soviet Union.
The potential for deploying Russia’s 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, starting at a kiloton, is not a matter of mere media speculation. The most prominent mouthpieces of “Greater Russia” nationalism are calling for their use.
The ultra-nationalist Hydra has many heads, but one has a louder voice than the others: the self-proclaimed “Red Nazi” Dugin. In a March 2023 Telegram viral post, Dugin called for a general mobilization of all Russian military forces, a militarization of the economy, the internment of war opponents, and the use of tactical nuclear weapons if other measures fail.
Dugin suggested “doing everything possible” to avoid using “non-strategic nuclear weapons” but using them when necessary. Russia should also be “ready to use strategic nuclear weapons,” Dugin said. Dugin’s daughter died in August 2022 when a bomb destroyed the car she was traveling in, which may have been intended for Dugin himself.
The bomb that killed Aleksandr Dugin’s daughter and the aftermath of which is shown here was probably intended for the self-proclaimed “Red Nazi”. Image: Twitter
Dugin, a self-proclaimed disciple of Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, has criticized Putin for prioritizing Russian polity over Russky Mir, or Russianness. “He puts the Russian state first, while I think of Russky Mir. This Russian world is much larger than the Russian state. “Putin is desecrating Russian identity and has disappointed many patriots,” the ideologue told a Dutch newspaper in 2018.
Russia’s war with Ukraine is practically a war between the Russian Federation and NATO. Russia is fighting an army of Ukrainians armed, trained, and paid for by the United States and other NATO countries. The sanctions against Russia, including the unprecedented seizure of some $500 billion of its foreign exchange reserves without a full declaration of war, were intended to destroy Russia’s combat capability.
All major Russian currents believe that the West’s goal in this war is to force regime change in Russia and possibly divide the ethnically diverse and geographically dispersed Russian Federation itself.
The Russians are not paranoid about this matter. Regime change in Russia has been on the agenda of some senior Biden administration officials for a decade.
As Undersecretary Nuland, then head of the State Department’s Eastern Europe Division, told a congressional committee on May 6, 2014, “Since 1992, we have provided $20 billion to Russia to support its pursuit of a transition to a peaceful, prosperous, ‘A democratic state its people deserve.” The same theme is dutifully reiterated in the major Washington think tanks and the editorials of the mainstream press.
Under Secretary Nuland. Photo: Asia Times files
There is no effective democratic opposition to the current Russian regime. Before 2022, the supposed democrat Alexei Navalny had the support of a few opinion leaders.
But even before the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian security services forced most of Navalny’s supporters to emigrate or put them in prison. The 24 February 2022 invasion was followed by another wave of immigration, effectively stripping the countryside of any liberal opposition.
Putin’s most likely policy response to the mutiny, and its temporary solution, will be to step up mobilization of Russian manpower, thereby adopting a key element of Dugin’s program. This is all the more likely after the Ukrainian government announced stricter mobilization standards in several oblasts, starting in Kyiv, on June 19.
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