Russia’s Putin accuses Wagner group of treason: live updates – The Wall Street Journal
The more well-known coups of recent years, such as those that overthrew governments in Thailand and Myanmar, have generally been swift and have involved the removal of civilian governments by the military. They tend to be quick and decisive, with little opportunity for elected leaders to do much about it.
In Russia it’s a bit more chaotic.
What is happening in Russia is more akin to an armed rebellion emanating from the country’s periphery with a very uncertain outcome, says Stathis Kalyvas, a professor of politics at Oxford University.
In a post on Twitter, he argued that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempt to overthrow Russia’s military leadership with his paramilitary Wagner force had little chance of succeeding unless there were mass evacuations from the regular army.
However, Kalyvas emphasized that it was not a local mutiny either. Wagner troops were already crossing the border from their bases in Ukraine with ease, capturing military installations in the city of Rostov, the seat of Russia’s military command to the south. They are now moving north towards Moscow, while Prigozhin, after months of bickering with Russian military commanders over ammunition and supplies, is now trying to remove them himself, accusing them of misleading Russian President Vladimir Putin and launching the invasion of the botched Ukraine.
Prigozhin, once a Putin confidante, has not explicitly criticized the Russian leader, instead blaming Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the chief of the armed forces, General Valery Gerasimov, for leading Russia into a disastrous war in Ukraine and providing his men with vital ammunition have withdrawn.
On Friday, Prigozhin accused the Russian Defense Ministry of ordering an attack on Wagner troops in which he said large numbers of men were killed, escalating his confrontation with the Russian military establishment. Prigozhin has indicated that his goal is not a coup but a “march for justice” overthrowing Shoigu and Gerasimov.
Local movements or uprisings sometimes result in governments being toppled, said Kristen Harkness, Lecturer in International Relations at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. You don’t always start from the center and in the case of Russia it’s too early to say what’s going on, she said.
It took Mao Zedong about 15 years from the start of his Long March in 1934 to the founding of the People’s Republic of China. When Julius Caesar died in 49 B.C. Marching on Rome from Gaul, tensions between Caesar and Pompey had been mounting for at least two years.
Much could depend on the resistance Prigozhin’s forces encounter as they advance north, and on how far Putin is willing to enforce his orders to annihilate Wagner fighters at a critical moment in the war in Ukraine.
And whether Prigozhin intends to or not, his latest venture appears to be at least an indirect challenge to Putin’s own authority.
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