Three + One Thoughts on Prigozhin’s Mutiny

The Russia is weak!

Hello all!

I apologize for my long absence. Personal and professional commitments, including a forthcoming cross-country move to Arizona, kept me away. But things are quieting down again, and here I am, back to writing here weekly.

Last weekend, Yevgeny Prigozhin led a mutiny in Russia. His Wagner Group departed Ukraine to march to Moscow. 120 miles from Moscow, the state and Prigozhin reached a deal that paused, stopped, or ended—the future will determine what the correct verb is—the enterprise. But whatever the future holds, a lot of it was written last weekend.

1. Vladimir Putin is weak, and everyone knows it.

If you are a strongman, the stability of your regime is in the term: strength. The stability of the regime depends on a clear understanding that there are severe prices to pay for those who challenge your authority. While a mutiny was not on most people’s radars, many wondered about a palace coup in the Kremlin since the war started. Including Putin.

In October, Putin visited a school. On the record, he asked the teacher about the cause of Pugachev’s Rebellion. She gave the right answer that it was about serfdom. Putin [in]corrected her: It was because of the weakness of the central authority, he said.

Why was Pugachev’s Rebellion at the top of Putin’s mind? Occam’s Razor answer is that he was worried about a rebellion at home.

What does a strongman do when there is a rebellion? He crushes it. That’s the best way to reassert your authority and deter future attempts. But Putin reached a deal with Prigozhin, and his [in]correcting the teacher gives us an insight to why: He has been aware of his authority’s weakness. In other words, he didn’t crush the mutiny because he could not afford it.

Over the past week, according to the reports, Russia’s internal security service is getting more resources, including tanks. This is at a time when the Russian military doesn’t have enough tanks to win a war it is already fighting. Taking resources away from it suggests that Putin is really worried.

And the causes for worrying are going to add up. Reportedly, some within the Russian military, as well as local civilians, cheered the Wagner Group on its way to Moscow. He passed the military checkpoints with little to no trouble, a sign that the military is not as loyal to the regime as one might have thought. The state arrested Sergei Surovikin, the most—and possibly only—competent Russian commander in Ukraine under the suspicion of assisting Prigozhin. Last, and most, it is now obvious that you can challenge Putin’s authority and get away with it. Even if Prigozhin ends up dead tomorrow, it won’t be the demonstration of force that you’d expect from a strongman, especially in contrast with Boris Yeltsin’s shelling of the duma in 1993 which is in most Russians’ living memory. That’s what a strongman looks like. So expect more of this.

Oh, by the way, Putin has never had a serious challenger to his rule. Before the mutiny, very few in Russia knew who Prigozhin was. Now, everybody knows. And he is no squish liberal democrat like Boris Nemtsov in cahoots with the Americans. He’s a thug, therefore, he can actually become popular among Russians.

2. Alexander Lukashenko is the winner.

It appears that Lukashenko was not the man who brokered the deal, but the man who took the credit for it. Here’s a little secret about Lukashenko: His hatred for Putin is only second to Volodymyr Zelensky’s. The free world has wanted Lukashenko gone and Belarus intact, while Putin has wanted Lukashenko there but Belarus gone. In other words, the free world wants a democratic Belarus, and Putin wants Lukashenko as the de jure ruler of Belarus, but himself as its de facto ruler.

For decades, Lukashenko did a two-step dance with the free world and Putin to prevent either outcome. After the 2020 uprising, that was no longer possible. The free world abandoned any hopes of engaging with him, leaving him at Putin’s mercy. Since, Putin has been doing what some call a “soft annexation” of Belarus. And Lukashenko hates it.

For the first time since 2020, Lukashenko might have a card to play against Putin. Prigozhin and some of his forces are going to reside in Belarus. I have little doubt that Putin will try to kill him, but I think that Lukashenko will protect him like a hawk. It’s too soon to tell, but if a large portion of the Wagner Group ends up residing in Belarus, expect that Lukashenko will use them to reverse Putin’s absorption of his country.

3. Ukraine is also a winner.

Putin’s regime is the most meritocratic regime in the world, and the merit for success is loyalty. The Russian military failed at taking Bakhmut, but the Wagner Group realized this objective. It came at a terribly heavy price, one possibly not worth paying. But it was embarrassing for the ministry of defense. It is possible that the minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu, decided to dissolve it because of its success to remove a parallel to his own power or a challenger to Putin’s power. Whatever the reason, the attempt to dissolve it led to the mutiny, at least according to Prigozhin.

Now you are seeing that resources are leaving the Ukraine front for the home front. As I mentioned earlier, the internal security forces are going to get stronger at the cost of winning the war. Surovikin is not going to take command again in Ukraine any time soon. He was removed from command after his success in withdrawing from Kherson, replaced by the less-than-competent Valery Gerasimov. Surovikin’s influence is going to diminish further, and the also less-than-competent Shoigu is going to become more influential. These are all good news for Ukraine. And I assume that Putin’s attention will be more focused on the home front. So there are going to be less attention to Ukraine, fewer resources allocated to the war, and an elevation of incompetent loyalists. What’s not to love?

+ 1. Last Word

It might have come down to either winning the war or keeping his power for Putin, and he might end up with neither. Over the next months, a lot could happen inside Russia because Prigozhin might have opened the pandora’s box. I can’t predict what will happen, but there is now a new challenger and evidence that some inside the system will sign on change if the opportunity arises. So a lot could happen. Oh also, there is this whole counteroffensive thing that has not yet really begun. If we enter autumn with a successful counteroffensive on par with last year’s, I wouldn’t want to be Putin.

Also, the first person who gets the reference in the subtitle will get a shoutout. Just email me back if you get it.