A mutiny that showed the strain on Putin’s rule system
Since the beginning of last year, Russia’s war in Ukraine has centered not just on the results on the battlefield, but also on a question in Moscow: Would President Vladimir V. Putin’s grip on power withstand the strain of waging of a long and costly war whose end is not yet in sight? ?
The events of the past few days, in which Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of a notorious private army named Wagner, briefly rebelled against the Russian military leadership, are not enough to answer that question. But they do suggest that Putin’s grip on the elite coalition that keeps him in power is under strain, with unpredictable consequences.
A crucial coalition
While authoritarian leaders appear to rule on fiat, they all rely on coalitions of powerful elites to stay in power, analysts say. The details vary by country and situation: some rely on the military, others on a single ruling party, the religious authorities or wealthy businessmen.
In Syria, for example, the military is dominated by members of Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite religious minority, and officers have long relied on the government for housing and other benefits, making their lives with the survival of the regime. Even as a popular uprising in 2011 turned into a bloody, protracted civil war, Assad’s supporters within the military kept him in power: the benefits of loyalty far outweighed the costs for them.
Putin’s alliance until recently seemed very robust, centered around the “siloviki,” a group of officials who entered politics after serving in the KGB or other security agencies, and who now hold key roles in Russia’s intelligence, oil and gas . industry and ministries.
His strong public support has long been another important source of strength, and Putin also had structural advantages. He is not accountable to a political party whose leadership could unite and replace him, as was the case in the Soviet Union. And by dividing power between various agencies, ministers and wealthy businessmen, he made sure that no single person or institution was strong enough to overthrow him.
But when Russia first launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, experts said the war could undermine its grip on power.
“The relationship between authoritarian rulers and their core elite supporters can be strained when dictators go to war abroad — especially when elites view the conflict as misguided,” said Erica de Bruin, a political scientist at Hamilton College and author of a recent book on coups d’etat.
For a while, Mr. Prigozhin looked like a solution to many of the president’s problems. The Wagner group joined the fighting last summer, as the Russian army tried to recover from heavy losses. Wagner led an offensive into eastern Ukraine and for a time was allowed to recruit thousands from Russian prisons.
The growing power of the mercenaries also counterbalanced that of the regular forces – an additional tool Putin used to protect his own power.
But it soon became clear that Wagner was causing trouble. Mr Prighozhin began to publicly criticize the conduct of the war, berating a close ally of Mr Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. In blasphemous posts on social media, he accused Mr. Shoigu and the Army Chief of General Staff of cowardice and corruption, and of sending Russians to the slaughter.
The leaders of the ministry, he said last year, “should go to the front barefoot with machine guns”.
As his online following grew, so did his populist appeal, giving him a level of political celebrity essentially unheard of in Putin’s Russia. Some analysts wondered if he could challenge the president himself.
But Mr Shoigu sought to rein in Wagner by cutting off his access to prisons and this month ordering his fighters to sign a contract with the military by July – a move that would have effectively dismantled the private group’s autonomy. Mr Prigozhin refused, while remaining loyal to Mr Putin.
When Mr. Prigozhin’s group was threatened by the army, the situation quickly escalated. In a series of social media posts on Friday, he accused Mr. Shoigu of ordering deadly attacks on Wagner fighters, saying, “The evils carried by the country’s military leaders must be stopped.”
That night he and his troops took the city of Rostov-on-Don. The next morning they started marching towards Moscow.
“Marked as weak”
The uprising was a mutiny, not a coup: Mr Prigozhin’s stated aim was to oust senior military leadership, not take over the country itself, and on Monday he called it a “protest” against the order to expel Wagner fighters have contracts signed. .
It was also over quickly. Late Saturday night, the Kremlin announced that Mr Prigozhin would leave Russia for Belarus, and that his troops would not suffer any repercussions.
The question now is what the mutiny says to the elites who keep Putin in power, and whether it has changed their incentives.
“Mutinies can be a sign of discontent within the ranks that would benefit future coup plotters,” said Dr. the brown. A large-scale study of the military mutinies in Africa, for example, found that they rarely escalate directly into coups, but are associated with a greater likelihood of coups in the near future.
Sometimes the opposite is true: in the aftermath of a failed coup, leaders often take the opportunity to purge those they suspect of disloyalty, strengthening their grip on power. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for example, cracked down on tens of thousands after a failed coup attempt in 2016 that purged the military as well as institutions such as the police, schools and courts.
But that may not be possible in this case, said Dr. de Bruin. Because Mr. Prigozhin retreated, rather than be defeated by the Russian army, “Putin is not coming out of this as if he won the confrontation,” she said. The public saw that Wagner troops were able to race to Moscow and they now seem to receive little punishment.
Even if there was more going on behind the scenes, looks matter. After making a short statement on Saturday, Putin disappeared from view and did not reappear during the dramatic uprising and its aftermath. Then his government announced a deal with Mr. Prigozhin, even though the president had publicly called Mr. Prigozhin’s actions “treacherous.”
Mr. Putin’s response, analysts said, may indicate that infidelity isn’t as costly as many might have thought.
Mr. Prigozhin is an “exceptional phenomenon” and isolated among Russia’s elites, according to Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, but she wrote on the weekend he dealt another blow to Mr. Putin. “I don’t rule out the possibility of future imitators, but there will never be another like him.”
That does not mean that Mr Putin’s days as president are numbered. But his grip on power seems less secure than ever before. Mr. Putin “is now marked as weak enough to challenge,” said Naunihal Singh, a professor at the Naval War College and the author of a book on the strategic logic of military coups. “I think there may be other challengers now.”