Prigozhin’s insurrection may be destined to fail but it will weaken Putin

Jamie Dettmer is the opinion editor of Politico Europe.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s insurrection — or “march for freedom,” as he describes it — doesn’t look like it will turn into Ten Days that Shook the World.

Indeed, the mutiny-cum-coup appears to share the half-cocked and poorly prepared characteristics of the failed putsch to oust the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.

At least the KGB and Communist hardliners who tried to unseat Gorbachev had the good sense and fortune to begin their campaign in Moscow, understanding that whoever controls the capital, controls Russia. 

By contrast, the Wagner forces of paramilitary leader Prigozhin are 1,000 kilometers away in Rostov. Although there are reports his soldiers may have taken some military facilities in Voronezh, that’s still 500 kilometers from the Russian capital and there are now efforts to prevent him from proceeding along the highway to Moscow. Residents there are telling Russian media that the road is blocked south and north of the city. 

“It is impossible to leave the city, there is a huge traffic jam, even shuttle buses are not allowed through,” one told the media outlet Vyorstka.

Ominously for Prigozhin, some key allies and friends have been peeling away — including  General Sergei Surovikin, notorious in the West as General Armageddon for his obliteration of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Surovikin, the former commander of Russian land forces in Ukraine, is popular among the country’s ultranationalists, and his demotion last year dismayed them. On Friday, he urged Wagner militiamen to cease their opposition to Russia’s military leadership and return to barracks.

“I urge you to stop,” he said in a video message posted on Telegram. “The enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation to worsen in our country.”

The Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said the Wagner chief’s mutiny “is unlikely to succeed” given that Surovikin had denounced his call for rebellion.

Kadyrov sticks with Putin

For much of last year, too, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and Prigozhin were united in their condemnation of Russia’s top brass, launching broadsides against the country’s army commanders, men they disdained as “peacetime generals.” Prigozhin gleefully endorsed Kadyrov’s call for hapless commanders to be punished, stripped of their rank and medals, and sent to the front.

“Beautiful, Ramzan, keep it up,” Prigozhin cooed in a social media post last October. “These thugs should be shipped to the front barefoot with machine guns,” he added.

But Kadyrov has been distancing himself from his erstwhile pal in recent weeks as the Wagner boss’s vituperative criticism has come ever closer to censuring President Vladimir Putin. Three weeks ago, one of Kadyrov’s top allies, Adam Delimkhanov, cast Prigozhin as a blogger who yells all the time: “Stop shouting, yelling and screaming,” he scolded in a social media post.

And some other key players and security agencies have clearly sided with the Kremlin. They include the FSB intelligence service, which has called on Wagner fighters “not to carry out the criminal and treacherous orders of Prigozhin” and to take steps to detain him themselves. It also accused Prigozhin of stabbing Russian servicemen in the back in a statement published by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.

Russia’s influential pro-war military bloggers have also denounced the Wagner chief, although they have never trusted him. “The country is on the verge of an attempted military coup. It’s not yet clear who initiated it. It is possible that both warring factions of the ‘party of power’ are striving for it,” said Igor Girkin, a Russian army veteran and former intelligence officer. He’s been calling for Prigozhin to be cut down to size for weeks.

Wait-and-see mode

Saying all that, some key players and military units appear to be remaining passive — much as their counterparts did in 1991 — waiting to see which way the wind is veering, keen not to be caught on the wrong side. Some prominent Russian politicians have also been noticeably mute.

Wagner Group forces clearly had no problems crossing from occupied territory in Ukraine into Russia in at least two locations, according to Britain’s Ministry of Defense. “In Rostov-on-Don, Wagner has almost certainly occupied key security sites, including the HQ which runs Russia’s military operations in Ukraine,” the ministry said. 

“Further Wagner units are moving north through Voronezh Oblast, almost certainly aiming to get to Moscow. With very limited evidence of fighting between Wagner and Russian security forces, some have likely remained passive, acquiescing to Wagner,” it added in an assessment of the startling events in Russia.

Prigozhin claims Russian guard units waved his men happily through. 

Notably, the Russian deputy defense minister, the deputy chief of military intelligence and the commander of the Western military district, General Sergei Kuzovlev, all met with the Wagner boss in Rostov on Saturday, where he told them he’s sure he’s “saving Russia.” Prigozhin seemed confident and full of menacing bravado in a video posted online purportedly of the gathering in which he denounced the country’s top generals.

It is unclear whether his interlocutors had approval from the Kremlin for the meeting, charged possibly with talking him down. But could they be playing both sides? 

There’s no doubt that Prigozhin’s mutiny amounts to the biggest political crisis Putin has faced in his quarter-of-a-century as Russia’s leader. It is a “huge blow to Putin’s legitimacy,” said Russian opposition leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The surrender of Rostov “won’t look good to his domestic audience,” he added in a tweet Saturday. 

“As strange as it may sound, I think anti-war Russians should support Prigozhin in this moment. He’s no ally of ours, and this support will be very temporary and conditional,” Khodorkovsky argued. 

Russian opposition leaders are obviously eager to seize on any evidence of cracks in Putin’s regime. But the signs are that Putin’s tough television address slamming Prigozhin and accusing him of posing a threat to Russia’s very survival has steadied “the system.” 

“Any internal turmoil is a deadly threat to our statehood and to us as a nation. This is a blow to Russia and to our people,” Putin said. “What we have been faced with is exactly betrayal. Extravagant ambitions and personal interests led to treason.”

And no doubt those who have been mute would have taken note of a warning.

“All those who consciously stood on the path of betrayal, who prepared an armed rebellion, stood on the path of blackmail and terrorist methods, will suffer inevitable punishment, before the law and before our people,” Putin vowed.

Farewell to Putin’s invincibility

As Putin was speaking, reports started to flow in of heavy fighting in the Voronezh region between Wagner mercenaries and Russian army units and National Guards, with Russian warplanes also engaged.

“The fight is now on,” tweeted former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul. “This is now a civil war.”

The weight of the armed forces is on Putin’s side, making it likely it will be a short-lived civil war. It is significant that the National Guard is reportedly in action. Led by Viktor Zolotov, one of the country’s most powerful siloviki, or “strongman” security officials, the National Guard comprises hundreds of thousands of troops, including special police units and rapid response forces. If the fight ever reached the Russian capital, the National Guard would likely be the determining force. 

Zolotov and Putin worked together in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, but since the invasion of Ukraine, he has been among some top officials who’ve been low-key, prompting analysts to question his loyalty or whether he was staying out of the spotlight, keeping his powder dry. He’s also close to Kadyrov and the Chechen leader’s turning away from Prigozhin may have played a role in his loyalty now.

Still, even if the mutiny is crushed quickly, the very fact it could be mounted in the first place will add to doubts about Putin’s hold on power. For any autocrat the appearance of invincibility and unchallengeable strength is key, and what has been apparent in the past 24 hours in Russia has been a sense of drift and indecisiveness, even fecklessness. 

And he is not out of the woods yet, said analyst Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“Putin has taken a clear stance to quash the rebellion,” she tweeted. “However, there are at least two major issues with this. The first one is the civilian population. Would they dare to attack civilian facilities in Rostov? The second issue pertains to controlling the army. It is tough to gauge current loyalties at the moment. I am confident that the military hierarchy stands with the government, and there won’t be any switching of allegiances. Yet, lower in the ranks, it’s a different story. If orders to open fire are issued, how will individual soldiers react?” 

She suspects the Kremlin will try to coax Prigozhin into surrendering but is skeptical the plan will succeed, arguing it will likely lead to a protracted stand-off. “However, Prigozhin’s downfall seems inevitable,” she says.

The big question is whether his downfall will set the stage for Putin’s eventual unmaking.