“Putin emerges enormously strengthened. He was put to the test, nobody tried to assassinate him, nobody tried to overthrow him, the army rallied around the President. Putin handled the situation with very authoritarian leadership. Now there can be tragic consequences for the war.” . Professor Alessandro Orsini believes that the story surrounding the protest of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner has left Vladimir Putin “enormously” strengthened. The mercenaries marched towards Moscow before stopping 200 km from the capital. “The Russians, according to the Western narrative, should have taken to the streets. That didn’t happen. Prigozhin gave the Russians a golden opportunity to overthrow Putin, and nobody took to the streets. This can be seen as a test of Putin’s confidence “among the populace and among heads of state,” says Orsini, professor of sociology of international terrorism at the Cartabianca.
“Prigozhin is completely unreliable. He says what he says to save his life,” he adds, referring to Prigozhin’s version, which declassified the uprising as a “protest.” “His reconstruction of the facts states that he had no intention of staging a military coup. As a scientist, I do not have sufficient information. I am inclined to think that Prigozhin realized that he was completely isolated, Putin had the compact ruling class.” No one around him tried to assassinate him, the army stood at Putin’s side. It is possible that Prigozhin tried to stage a military coup, and now he tells a different story in order not to be killed. It is possible that Prigozhin did not do it “I wanted to carry out a coup, but events made his actions so. He shot at Russian soldiers and apparently shot down a plane. He behaved like someone who initiated a military coup attempt,” says Orsini. “The big conflict was not between Prigozhin and Putin, but between Prigozhin and Defense Minister Shoigu. What will happen to Wagner’s boss? I don’t think it’s convenient for Putin to assassinate him now, maybe he will later.” “The elimination of Prigozhin at this point would be detrimental to Russia, also given Wagner’s role in Africa,” he adds.
The events of the last week “will have very tragic consequences” for the war. “Putin had confirmation that NATO in Ukraine posed an existential threat to Russia. What we saw with Prigozhin is the threat of civil war: Putin cannot lose the war in Ukraine. The war between Russia and Ukraine ended after three weeks, it was won by Russia. Then the war between Russia and NATO began… Now Putin can keep the same strategy of attrition and everything stays as it is. Or, if he is afraid of being overthrown, Putin initiates a sharp acceleration on an unprecedented scale using military aviation and thus the ultimate devastation of Ukraine. At this point, Putin cannot end the war without capturing the Kharkiv and Sumy regions bordering Russia.