Late Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke publicly about the end of a mutiny that had plunged the country into chaos. Any attempt to foment “internal unrest” was doomed to failure, he said, claiming he could have crushed the uprising but wanted to avoid bloodshed.
“They wanted the Russians to fight each other,” Putin said in his brief remarks. “They rubbed their hands and dreamed of taking revenge for their failures at the front and during the so-called counter-offensive. But they miscalculated.”
It was a glimpse into the official narrative that emerged after an armed uprising led by Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner paramilitary group. In less than 24 hours, Wagner fighters captured military installations in southern Russia and marched toward Moscow. Then, just as abruptly, Prigozhin stopped this movement, claiming that it was all part of the plan. The Kremlin later said an agreement had been reached, apparently negotiated by Belarus, that Prigozhin would avoid prosecution if he went into exile in Belarus in return. However, the details of this are still very unclear.
But Putin’s remarks Monday night did little to answer the many questions that still swirl around Wagner’s uprising, including the position of Putin himself.
Prigozhin has since stated that he did not attempt a coup; Instead, he tried to prevent his Wagner fighters from being absorbed by the Russian military. That will still happen, according to Putin, unless those fighters choose to go to Belarus as well or agree to being fired.
And that uprising was perhaps the biggest challenge the Russian regime has faced in decades. Prigozhin might not want to overthrow Putin, but within 24 hours it seemed possible that Putin could be overthrown. The Russian President has shown that he is not the infallible strongman he made himself out to be.
And yet. It is probably far, far too early to declare this the end of Putin. The mutiny exposed the cracks in Putin’s control and in the autocratic system he created. Those weaknesses were in many ways already visible in Russia’s failures in Ukraine, but this time there was a lack of communication and confusion on Russia’s home turf.
“This provides us with a lot of information about his style of government, which we know is currently under duress and not necessarily fully rational,” said David Szakonyi, an assistant professor of political science at George Washington University, of Putin. “But in the end he eliminated one of his greatest threats to power.”
Again, there is still great uncertainty about the consequences of Prigozhin’s adventure. The mutiny exposed the flaws in Putin’s system and revealed a breakdown in some of the trade and negotiation deals that make such an autocratic system work. This world saw that. But so is Putin, and how he responds can ultimately determine how vulnerable he really remains.
What should we make of Putin’s response to the Wagner uprising, as best we can
Putin’s Monday remarks were the first since the end of Prigozhin’s mutiny on Saturday. The Russian leader had been somewhat absent throughout the Wagner episode, save for comments on Saturday in which he described the uprising as a treason and said that anyone who knowingly followed the path of treason would be “inevitably punished”.
But it was apparently Belarusian President Alexandr Lukashenko who brokered a deal with Prigozhin, although it is likely Putin endorsed it. (Some pundits speculated that perhaps Putin didn’t want to get his hands dirty by dealing directly with Prigozhin, so he sent his kind of puppet to take care of it.)
Still, Putin was conspicuously absent in the hours after the uprising. Only on Monday, hours after Prigozhin himself released an audio message backing his grievances, did Putin’s spokesman tease Putin’s forthcoming speech, saying it will “without exaggeration determine the fate of Russia.”
But Putin’s follow-up speech on Monday didn’t exactly promise punishment for Prigozhin (whom he didn’t name) or Wagner fighters. Putin said the uprising failed because the whole of Russian society united against it — though those people weren’t exactly taking to the streets, if they existed at all. Putin also pointed out that while the mutineers wanted bloodshed, he wanted to avoid it on Russian soil.
Szakonyi said some pro-Russian propagandists used this kind of narrative: “Sure, it was a bad option for the Kremlin to make a deal with a man who is being labeled a traitor.” But the really, really bad option would be chaos and fighting on the streets of Moscow, images of Russians killing Russians.
And oddly enough, Putin seems to have at least implemented the populist threat that Prigozhin presented, even if it may not have materialized as planned.
Prigozhin had escalated his feud with Russian military leaders to an astonishing degree in recent weeks. In Putin’s Russia there is room for different camps of elites to do battle among themselves. And in the case of Prigozhin, his criticism, at least initially, put pressure on the generals of the war, but not on the need for a Russian war in Ukraine.
But then Prigozhin approached and crossed that line, criticizing the justification for the war and the elites who benefited from it. Such a populist attack doesn’t exactly make Putin look like he’s in control. Indeed, Moscow appeared to be trying to curtail Prigozhin’s power by forcing Wagner fighters to sign with the Ministry of Defense (Prigozhin’s stated reason for starting his uprising). Prigozhin may also have realized that his time was up (perhaps literally). But now, it seems, Prigozhin will be at least a less active and less legitimate critic of the war effort.
“Why should Putin have to do more? It means nothing if you try to get revenge on Wagner or have people jailed and executed,” said Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
The weaknesses of Putinism do not mean the end of Putin. But man, there are still so many questions!
Of course, it’s fair to say that just getting over all of this is going to be quite difficult.
Putin’s Monday speech may have been an attempt to bolster stability, but it was not entirely successful. No one really understands the outlines of this so-called deal with Prigozhin, or how Prigozhin was able to push it so far, seemingly catching Russian security services off guard (although Western intelligence officials have hinted they have some idea of what Prigozhin was up to). To). Apart from his recorded statements, Prigozhin has not actually surfaced yet, and the exact interpretation of these events by Wagner fighters, Russian soldiers and the public is still quite opaque. Wagner’s service in Ukraine and Bakhmut has made them heroes, and crowds cheered as Wagner fighters left the southern city of Rostov-on-Dov on Saturday.
One of the bigger questions is how the Russian elite will respond. There is a possibility of divisions and power struggles that could further erode Putin’s rule.
“I think there has to be a sense that Putin is losing his mojo and he’s supposed to be the one who keeps everything in balance, he’s supposed to be the one who protects all our interests,” said Brian Taylor, a Russia expert and professor of political science at Syracuse University. “And then one of his creatures turns on him and tries to bite his hand off and everyone has to pretend it didn’t happen – I can’t imagine that.”
In many ways, Prigozhin’s uprising was shocking because his position was entirely dependent on Putin. He may be the leader of the Wagner group, but he got the job more or less because of his connections with Putin. In Russia, particularly Putin’s Russia, these informal relationships are important, and having an official role in the system does not necessarily imply power and influence.
Prigozhin’s mutiny showed the downside of such a system. As Taylor noted, some of the Wagner fighters advanced with little resistance, perhaps in part because no one really understood what was going on. Prigozhin isn’t the country’s boss, but “he also has this connection to the biggest boss of them all.” And that’s why maybe I shouldn’t do anything,” Taylor said, “and so everyone sat idly by while this mutiny went on all day , because no one really felt able to do anything to stop them.”
Putin himself may not have fully understood what went wrong and where the threats came from. “If his back is against the wall, he chooses the better choice from the bad options in front of him,” Szakonyi said of Putin. “The question is: how many times can you still manage to pick the worst of two really bad options before it all collapses?”
Putin may be trying to limit the damage behind the scenes and figure out who failed where, which means it’s a bit difficult to gauge Putin’s relative inaction at this point. In the past, Putin has responded to challenges with raids and purges. “I think we have to see: will there be more repressive measures? Will more heads roll? I think it’s too early to tell,” said Angela Stent, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and author of Putin’s World: Russia vs. the West and With the Rest.
The fate of high-ranking military leaders like Shoigu seems assured, at least in the short term. Otherwise, layoffs could seem like a concession to Prigozhin. On Monday, a television broadcast following his comments also showed Putin meeting with senior defense officials, including Shoigu, in another apparent attempt to keep things business as usual.
Above all, Russia’s war in Ukraine. Prigozhin’s uprising was shocking, but it is a symptom of a larger dysfunction within Russia, and Moscow’s disastrous campaign in Ukraine has made this clear. “The big question that remains is: what is happening on the battlefield in Ukraine? That’s what will either preserve or destroy this regime,” Lievan said.
He told the people of Moscow that there were two camps when it came to the outcome of the war: “On the one hand, they say they cannot imagine circumstances in which Putin would fall. But equally, they say, we cannot imagine how Putin could survive.”