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Chamada Pública – Edital de publicação para o N. 13 da Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico do Distrito Federal
(ISSN 2525-6653)
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Derrota de Putin na Ucrânia pode ter consequências inimagináveis
Thomas Friedman, THE NEW YORK TIMES
O Estado de S. Paulo, 29/06/2023
Os acontecimentos recentes na Rússia se parecem com o trailer do próximo filme de James Bond: o ex-chefe, hacker e mercenário de Vladimir Putin, Ievgeni Prigozhin se rebela. Prigozhin, parecendo com um personagem saído diretamente de ‘Doctor No’, lidera um comboio de ex-detentos e mercenários em uma corrida excêntrica para tomar a capital russa, derrubando alguns helicópteros no caminho. Eles encontram tão pouca resistência que a internet está cheia de imagens de seus mercenários esperando pacientemente para comprar café pelo caminho, como se dissessem: ‘Ei, podem colocar uma tampa no café? Não quero sujar meu blindado.”
Ainda não está claro se o frio e calculista Putin dirigiu qualquer ameaça direta a seu velho amigo Prigozhin, mas o líder mercenário, sendo um velho laranja de Putin, claramente não estava assumindo riscos. E com razão. O sempre útil presidente de Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, que abrigou Prigozhin, relatou que Putin compartilhou consigo o desejo de matar o mercenário e “esmagá-lo como um inseto.”
Como o sinistro Ernst Stavro Blofeld, o vilão dos filmes de James Bond que lidera o sindicato internacional do crime Spectre e sempre era visto acaraciando seu gatinho branco enquanto tramava algum ardil, Putin é quase sempre visto em sua longa mesa branca, com as visitas geralmente sentadas no lado oposto da peça, onde, é possível suspeitar, uma armadilha espera pronta para engolir qualquer um que saia da linha.
A minha reação inicial ao ver o drama se desenrolar na CNN foi questionar se tudo aquilo era real. Não sou fã de teorias da conspiração, mas 007 — Viva e Deixe Morrer não tem nada a ver com esse motim com um roteiro escrito em Moscou — um roteiro ainda em produção, enquanto um Putin analógico tenta alcançar com a TV estatal russa um Prighozin digital que o cerca com sua comunicação via Telegram.
Responder a pergunta que muitos me fazem — O que Putin fará agora — é impossível. Eu seria cauteloso, no entanto, em tirá-lo de cena tão rápido. Lembrem-se: Blofeld apareceu em seis filmes do James Bond até que o 007 finalmente o derrotasse.
Tudo que se pode fazer por enquanto, creio, é tentar calcular os diferentes equilíbrios de poder envolvidos nessa história e analisar quem, nos próximos meses, pode fazer o quê.
As fraquezas de Vladimir Putin
Permitam-me começar com o maior equilíbrio de poder em questão, que nunca pode ser deixado de lado. E o presidente Biden merece os aplausos por ele. Foi graças à ampla coalizão reunida pelo presidente dos Estados Unidos para enfrentar Putin na Ucrânia que expôs a face do vilarejo Potemkin do líder russo.
Gosto da argumentação de Alon Pinkas, ex-diplomata israelense sediado nos EUA, em um artigo publicado no Haaretz nesta semana. Segundo ele, Biden entendeu desde o começo que Putin é o epicentro de uma constelação antiamericana, antidemocrática e fascista que precisa ser derrotada. E com ela, não há negociação possível. O motim de Prigozhin fez na prática o que Biden tem feito desde a invasão da Ucrânia: expôs as fraquezas de Putin, ferundo sua já abalada aparência de invencibilidade e sua suposta condição de gênio estrategista.
Putin, há muito, governa com dois instrumentos: medo e dinheiro, cobertos com uma capa de nacionalismo. Ele comprou quem poderia comprar e prendeu ou matou quem não podia. Mas agora alguns observadores do que acontece na Rússia argumentam que o medo está se dissipando em Moscou. Com a aura de invencibilidade de Putin abalada, outros poderiam desafiá-lo. Veremos.
Se eu fosse Prigozhin ou um de seus aliados, ficaria longe de qualquer um que passasse na calçada em Belarus com um guarda-chuva em um dia de sol. Putin tem feito um trabalho bastante efetivo eliminando seus críticos e ninguém pode subestimar o temor profundo dos russos sobre qualquer retorno ao caos do período pós-soviético, no início dos anos 90. Muitos deles ainda são gratos a Putin pela ordem que ele restaurou no país.
Um plano que pode dar certo
Quando analisamos o equilíbrio de poder de Putin com o resto do mundo as coisas ficam complicadas. No Ocidente, temos de temer as fraquezas de Putin tanto quanto tememos suas forças.
Ainda não há um sinal de que o motim de Prigozhin ou a contraofensiva ucraniana tenham levado a qualquer colapso significativo das forças Rússias na Ucrânia. Apesar disso, ainda é cedo para qualquer conclusão.
Fontes do governo americano dizem que a estratégia de Putin é exaurir o Exército ucraniano até o ponto em que ele não tenha mais suas peças de artilharia howitzer de 155 milímetros nem seus sistemas antiaéreos cedidos por Washington. Essas peças são a principal arma das forças terrestres ucranianas. Sem elas, a Força Aérea Russa teria alguma supremacia até que os aliados ocidentais tenham seus recursos exauridos, ou até Donald Trump voltar à Casa Branca e Putin conseguir algum acordo sujo com ele que salve sua pele.
A estratégia não é maluca. A Ucrânia gasta tanto esse tipo de munição — cerca de 8 mil por dia — que o governo americano está tentando encontrar reposição para elas antes que novas entregas industriais dessas peças cheguem no ano que vem.
Além disso, a logística é importante numa guerra. Também é importante se você está no ataque ou na defesa. Atacar é mais difícil e os russos estão entrincheirados e com toda sua linha defensiva minada. É por isso que a contraofensiva ucraniana tem sido tão lenta.
Como me disse Ivan Krastev, especialista em Rússia e diretor do Centro de Estatégias Liberais na Bulgária: “No primeiro ano da guerra, quando a Rússia estava no ataque, todo dia sem uma vitória era uma derrota. No segundo ano, todo dia em que a Ucrânia não está vencendo é uma vitória para os russos.”
Nós não devemos subestimar a coragem dos ucranianos. Mas também não podemos superestimar a exaustão do país como uma sociedade.
E como a história ensina, o Exército da Rússia tem aprendido com seus erros. John Arquilla, professor da Escola Naval de Pós-Graduação na Califórnia e autor de Blitzkrieg: os novos desafios da guerra cibernética, “os russos sofrem, mas aprendem.”
Segundo o professor, o Exército de Putin ficou melhor em manter a hierarquia da tropa no front. Além disso, segundo Arquilla, eles aperfeiçoaram o uso de drones em combate. Ao mesmo tempo, os ucranianos mudaram sua estratégia inicial, de usar unidades móveis menores, armadas com armas inteligentes, para atacar um imóvel Exército russo, para um perfil mais pesado e maior, com tanques e blindados.
“Os ucranianos agora estão cada vez mais parecidos com o Exército russo que estavam derrotando no ano passado”, disse Arquilla. “O campo de batalha nos dirá se essa é a melhor estratégia.”
Os riscos de uma Rússia sem Putin
Isto posto, devemos nos preocupar tanto com a perspectiva de uma derrota de Putin quanto de qualquer vitória. E se ele for derrubado? Não estamos mais na época do fim da União Soviética. Não há ninguém bonzinho ou decente ali. Nenhum personagem inspirado em Yeltsin ou Gorbachev está à espreita para assumir o poder.
“A velha União Soviética tinha algumas instituições estatais que eram responsável por manter o funcionamento da burocracia, bem como alguma ordem de sucessão. Quando Putin entrou em cena, ele destruiu ou subverteu todas as estruturas sociais e políticas além do Kremlin”, me explicou Leon Aron, especialista em Rússia do American Enterprise Institute, cujo livro sobre a Rússia de Putin sai em outubro.
No entanto, a História da Rússia traz algumas reviravoltas surpreendentes, ele diz. “Apesar disso, numa perspectiva histórica, os sucessores de líderes reacionários no país costumam ser mais liberais: o czar Alexander II depois de Nicolas I, e na URSS, Kruschev depois de Stalin, e Gorbachev depois de Andropov. Então, se houver uma transição pós-Putin, há esperança.
Apesar disso, no curto prazo, Se Putin for derrubado, podemos acabar com alguém pior. Como você, leitor, se sentiria, se Prigozhin estivesse no Kremlin desde hoje cedo comandando o arsenal nuclear da Rússia?
Um outro cenário possível é a desordem ou uma guerra civil e a consequente implosão da Rússia nas mãos de diversos oligarcas e grupos armados. Por mais que eu deteste Putin, eu odeio o caos ainda mais, porque quando um Estado do tamanho da Rússia colapsa é muito difícil reconstruí-lo As armas nucleares e a criminalidade derivadas dessa catástrofe mudariam o mundo.
E isso não é uma defesa de Putin. É uma expressão de raiva pelo que ele fez a seu país, tornando-o uma bomba-relógio continental. Ele fez o mundo inteiro refém.
Se Putin vencer, o povo russo perderá. Mas se ele perder e for substituído pelo caos, o mundo inteiro sairá derrotado.
Um China Talk dedicado inteiramente à tentativa de golpe na Rússia. Muito interessante as comparações com fatos históricos do passado, mas eles nunca se aplicam inteiramente à situação presente. Putin vai se manter até que a situação material na Rússia se deteriore significativamente. Com o apoio da China de Xi Jinping, isso pode demorar.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Yevgeny Prigozhin (center) enjoying a weekend chat | Reuters
The Russian Game
Jordan Schneider: Did Putin survive a coup this past weekend?
Kamil Galeev: More like an unsuccessful coup attempt. But even if were unsuccessful, it is still consequential. What many foreign observers may not know is that the Russian army has not really been a factor in “big politics” for most of the time.
An interesting feature of the Russian regime, including the Soviet period, is the exclusion of the army from big politics.
There are some exceptions, of course, especially during the transfer of power. The aftermath of the death of Stalin is one example.
But for the most part, the army has not been a factor in big politics. The influence of the military never converted into factional strife. What we have seen in the past few days is probably the most significant attempt to do so in the last seventy years.
Jordan Schneider: What were Prigozhin’s reasons for doing this?
Kamil Galeev: It looks very shady. Things like this usually look shady. Attempted or successful coups often have an element of 4D chess among the political leadership. Different forces try playing their own games.
Some observers in Russia, Eastern Europe, or Ukraine might write off what happened as staged events. But even if it were hypothetically staged, the consequences are real.
Consider the Kornilov putsch in 1917. It’s highly probable — some would say it’s almost certain — that the events in August or September 1917 showed signs of 4D chess by the provisional government headed by Aleksandr Kerensky. He at least somehow participated in it. In a sense, that coup attempt was orchestrated by the supreme leadership.
But even if it were orchestrated or staged, the consequences of the Kornilov putsch were still real. What we are going to see now will be very similar.
Jordan Schneider: So it doesn’t matter who orchestrated this — the end result is that Putin is weakened?
Kamil Galeev: Absolutely. Now, I could speculate that Prigozhin’s coup was a negotiation — not an internal negotiation but an external one with the West and especially the US. Putin might be saying, “If you continue pressuring me, some group of crazy gangsters and Nazis could take power and seize parts of our nuclear arsenal. Catastrophe will follow. Stop pressuring me.” That is pure speculation, but it is possible.
Another explanation might be that it was an attempt to scare the Russians themselves. In this sense, Putin might be saying, “If I fall down, you all go with me. Some horrible, absolutely unhinged rascals are going to take power. That will bring terrible consequences for everyone.” That is a nice explanation.
We could develop more speculations like this. They are absolutely possible. Some of them have an element of truth in them. It is plausible that some factions in power participated in orchestrating and staging what we saw.
But even if the coup were orchestrated or staged, the consequences are still real. We should keep in mind that complex, sophisticated 4D chess often does not work — or it works until it goes wrong.
My favorite story is the 1801 assassination of the Emperor of Russia Paul I. He invited the general governor of St. Petersburg, Count Pahlen, and told him, “You see, they are preparing a coup attempt against me.” Pahlen said, “Yes, and I am participating in the coup so that I may collect information. Everything is under control.” “Great,” said the Emperor. He calmed down. He decided it was okay. Very soon he was killed.
Everything can go wrong for many reasons on the tactical level. On strategic level, it looks even more complicated.
A coup legitimizes the use of direct military force in the internal competition of factions — a dynamic they had previously tried to avoid.
The previous attempt to consolidate a base for a potential military coup was in Yeltsin’s era with General Lev Rokhlin. But that never got past the preparatory stage. What we have seen now is that you can start a coup and achieve significant results. That normalizes the use of the military for advancing the interests of your faction.
“The murder of Tsar Paul I of Russia,” March 1801. A print from “La France et les Français à Travers les Siècles,” Volume IV | Wikimedia Commons
Barons and Courtiers
Jordan Schneider: When we last spoke, we discussed a world where Russia’s elites amass their own private armies to secure their spots in Russia’s future. It sounded far-fetched at the time, but the events of this past weekend suggest it is plausible. Now everyone in Russia knows mutinous action is possible. How does that change things?
Kamil Galeev: Who attempted this coup? It is not some independent baron or someone who rose without Putin. It’s basically a gangster who took power only because he was a member of the St. Petersburg gang, commissioned by Putin to do dirty jobs for him abroad in Ukraine. That’s really the only source of his power.
It’s very revealing because it’s not some regional interest group or provincial actors who made this move against the supreme power. It’s the supreme power’s own agents.
Niccolò Machiavelli made a distinction between two types of regimes. There are regimes that resemble France and those that resemble the Ottoman Empire.
The former are relatively easy to overthrow but difficult to control.France was a baronial regime with many dispersed barons. Aggressors could make alliances with these barons to overthrow the central power. But once you overthrew the central power, you couldn’t really rule the country because there were still lots of barons.
The Ottoman Empire was a very different type of regime. It didn’t have strong baronial factions like France did. It was more difficult to defeat the central power because aggressors could not ally with any independent powers. But once an aggressor took control, it was easy to hold.There were no independent powers to conspire against the aggressor.
People from baronial regimes are naturally shaped by them. They generally fail to comprehend other types of regimes, like one centered around a royal court.
America is a baronial regime. Russia, on the other hand, is ruled by courtiers. Many things happening in Russia are just unintelligible to Americans. The same goes for Russians looking at American politics.
For Russians, it is absolutely incomprehensible that the federal government in DC could have a major investment plan thwarted by a Senator from West Virginia. It’s unimaginable. Most Russian people — including people with resources, people with power — would not really believe that happened. There should have been some 4D chess within the federal government.
Russia does not have strong baronial factions. They exist but they are much weaker.
Russia is ruled by courtiers. When there is upheaval — when there is betrayal — it is not the barons who betray. They are weak. It is the courtiers. The Kremlin most fears not regional separatists, governors, or provincial interest groups. The Kremlin fears its own federal agents. No one else has the resources.
Photograph by Mikhail Svetlov | Getty
Après Putin, Le Déluge?
Jordan Schneider: How does the coup change the calculus for the Prigozhin-in-waiting — the inner-circle courtiers who have the independent means to do crazy things?
Kamil Galeev: We can only read the clues. We have seen that a military uprising is basically possible.
Most of the military and paramilitary structures, when faced with a coup, did nothing. It looks as though most of the military and paramilitary groups in the region where the attempted coup took place did not join Prigozhin. But they did not stand against Wagner either. They acted more like part of the landscape.
There was also quite a lot of public enthusiasm. On the streets of Rostov-on-Don, there was much cheering when the Wagner guys came, and there was a lot of booing when the police came in after.
The southern regions — cities like Belgorod, Rostov-on-Don, and Krasnodar — are really socially conservative and relatively well-off. They are very much pro-war — much more than the average Russian. They have traditionally been framed as the pro-Putin regions of Russia.
This shows that a simple “pro-Putin” versus “anti-Putin” dichotomy is just wrong when it comes to measuring overall Russian political attitudes. When another force presents itself as more brutish, patriotic, and militant, the people will cheer. They prefer some warlord like Prigozhin rather than Putin.
The people of southern Russia did not do anything to help or obstruct Prigozhin’s revolt either. They are absolutely willing to accept the intrusion of the military and paramilitary into political affairs. They’re basically waiting for it.
There’s a lot of discourse when people analyze electoral maps in Russia: “This region has traditionally voted for Putin, or that region has voted against him” — it’s not completely senseless or meaningless.
These analysts wrongly assume Russia has elections. It does not. It has never had elections, at least on a presidential level.
Elections have options. There is still some intrigue. There is still some anticipation, because America — the leading global power — has changed after many elections. The supreme executive power in Russia never changes as a result of elections. But elections still take place formally.
These are not elections. They are acclamations, as one might do for a Byzantine emperor. A ruler may succeed to power, but he still must receive his acclamation.
Yeltsin got his acclamations. Putin gets his all the time. But the crowd that would readily acclaim Putin would acclaim another guy, too.
Then there is also Putin’s standing within the circle of Russia’s ruling elite. He can say, explicitly or implicitly, that people hate the elites in general but they love him. He could say he is the only legitimate ruler and that the others enjoy their positions because of him. That would be a strong argument.
But that now looks like a much weaker argument than it did a few months ago.
Jordan Schneider: How has the attempted coup changed Putin’s options?
Kamil Galeev:His options are probably somewhat weaker now that other members of the ruling circle see that the willingness to acclaim Putin is not necessarily all about Putin.
People in general — especially the population in the regions deemed pro-Putin — are ready to cheer and acclaim pretty much everyone. It’s not some unique property of Putin which makes him irreplaceable for the existing elite.
It may not be a drastic change, but the experiment has been conducted.
Putin will probably be forced to repress those who were prone to supporting Wagner. The lords of the military and paramilitary, even if they did not outright support the mutiny, did not raise a finger either. That includes paratroopers, warrior cops, and the infantry.
The regime does not see all these fellows as absolutely loyal when facing an internal enemy. There will probably be some purges, though not necessarily bloody. We’re already seeing them on some of the more gruesome videos showing allegedly pro-Wagner troops getting their throats cut.
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
Prigozhin’s coup basically looks more like the Kornilov putsch. There is a mutiny, it is suppressed, but the repressions and purges the regime conducts then weaken the regime, exposing it to further mutinies.
Jordan Schneider: What does all this mean for the war in Ukraine?
Kamil Galeev: Some Ukrainians, including those close to the regime in Kyiv, have been excessively optimistic. Many hoped the Russian regime would fall immediately and the war would stop. That did not happen, and it will not happen for a while.
But now that the taboo against military force in internal political games has been broken. The regime is weaker.
My personal prediction is we will see a second attempt — not necessarily by the same force, but quite probably by another force — within three to six months.
A Coup by Any Other Name
Enver Pasha forcing Kâmil Pasha to Resign | Wikimedia Commons
Jordan Schneider: How else might the lessons of the October Revolutionapply to today?
Kamil Galeev: Many people, including Putin himself, are drawing parallels to 1917. He compared Prigozhin’s coup attempt to 1917 when he said the mutiny was a “stab in the back.”
These parallels have been already normalized. Once the Bolsheviks took power and consolidated the regime, they made it their top priority to prevent any potential threats from the military. The Soviet Army was optimized for that purpose — so that it would not challenge the Communist Party’s rule.
Control of the Soviet Army was heavily centralized. Relatively few decisions are delegated. This hurt the army’s fighting efficiency, but also made it less of a political challenge.
It was successful. For many decades, the Communist Party ruled. There were no successful coup attempts. All were suppressed in their earliest stages, usually just at the point of talking.
Coups happen in relatively centralized regimes. If a regime is sufficiently decentralized, you don’t get a coup — you get a civil war. That’s quite different. Coups are usually executed by military and paramilitary forces. People are the source of legitimization.
I love how Enver Pasha did it: during the Raid on the Sublime Porte in 1913, he came to the Grand Vizier Kâmil Pasha, the prime minister of the Ottoman Empire, and demanded he write a letter of resignation. So he started writing, “At the suggestion of the military.” Enver interrupted him, adding, “…and the people.”
The “people” are a source of legitimacy — but they are usually passive. They cheer for one force. They can also cheer for another.
Wish Upon a Falling Czar
Kamil Galeev: We’re probably seeing the end of the regime that naturally evolved from 1917.
That regime was revolutionary. It came by an abrupt, radical break with the past. The previous order was overthrown. The previous elites were persecuted and physically slaughtered. The Soviet regime was very different from what had existed previously and it was headed by different elites.
After that you just had evolution, not revolution. Lenin’s regime quite organically evolved into Stalin’s, and Stalin’s into Khrushchev’s, and so forth. Putin himself may have a personally negative opinion of Lenin and his regime — but Putin’s regime is ultimately the result of the gradual evolution of Lenin’s regime.
Quite probably after Putin, we’ll see a replacement, not an evolution, of his regime — something far exceeding what we saw in the 1990s. It wouldn’t be so much the fall of Putin as the replacement of elites in Russia on a gigantic scale.
Jordan Schneider: Why do you believe that whatever happens next will be a much more radical transformation of the regime and not just a changing of the guard?
Kamil Galeev: Regimes fall. We do not usually foresee these falls before they happen. The anthropologist Alexei Yurchak wrote a book called Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. That’s what usually happens. It’s usually impossible to predict it exactly, but it will be easily explained retrospectively, which everyone will be doing once it happens.
When there is an interconnected group of families ruling for decades with relatively low social mobility, that makes a regime fragile. The low level of being selected out of the regime helps secure the positions of individual families or interest groups, but it makes the system as a whole much more brittle.
The Russian ruling regime would be more robust were it to enthusiastically remove its own members. For example, there are generals in Russia — generals of the army, police, FSB, and many other services. They used to have a maximum age for retirement, somewhere around sixty years of age. Then Putin raised it to sixty-five or thereabouts — then seventy, then eighty, and then he just abolished it all.
Putin is naturally a conservative person. He doesn’t want to experiment much. He doesn’t want to change his people. If he were retiring staff one by one and getting new people, the ruling circle would be more mixed-age.
But if you just refuse to do anything, you will have the same group of people in power until they die. Then they’ll be dying one by one very quickly. That is similar to what happened at the end of the USSR.
Jordan Schneider: How worried should I be for the future of humanity in that case?
Kamil Galeev: Many Russians believe the West and especially America conspired against Russia and are just plotting to devolve the country into microstates. These Russians never comprehend how scared most Americans — including most political analysts — are about that scenario.
I understand your concern. While I cannot cure you, it’s a completely sound perspective. Maybe it makes sense to prepare in case that happens.
Jordan Schneider: Any final thoughts on Russia’s future? What have we neglected?
Kamil Galeev: Look at how the US intelligence and military command evolves over time. They put much less focus on military production than they used to during the Cold War. These concerns probably peaked in the 1970s, and it’s been downhill since then.
As a result, the nuclear status of Russia is discussed as a given — grass is green, the sky is blue, the sun is yellow, and Russia is a nuclear power. But in most cases, Russia’s nuclear power status is not problematized at all.
Russia went through the post-Soviet collapse. It lost most of its machinery. It lost most of its supply chains for military production. How can it still maintain its weapons of mass destruction as well as its delivery systems? How can it even produce new weapons and delivery systems? The short answer is that Russia outsourced its production of industrial equipment. The US and its allies provided this. There are no other alternatives in the world.
Both the maintenance of the existing part of the weapons of mass destruction and of delivery systems and their placement now fully depend on the importation of industrial equipment. In this case, it’s mostly machine tools, components, and maintenance supplied by US allies. Almost no one is discussing this. It gets almost zero attention nowadays, and I don’t fully comprehend why.
Next up, a 4000-word conversation where Kamil and I discuss:
Prospects of nuclear war;
His advice for Biden, European leaders, and Putin’s courtiers;
Anyone who watched Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin over the past few months knows that he had grown progressively unhinged in the run-up to his mutiny, just as his political position had become increasingly untenable.
Prigozhin was furious at the leaders of Russia’s Ministry of Defense, whom he repeatedly accused of sending tens of thousands of Russian soldiers to certain death through their corruption, incompetence, and cowardice. Over 20,000 of his own fighters were killed in the bloody battle for Bakhmut – a town of only 70,000 inhabitants before the war. He publicly blamed Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov for Russia’s casualties and battlefield struggles.
Notably, Russian President Vladimir Putin had largely allowed him to voice his criticism – a remarkable show of tolerance in a country that punishes “discrediting” the army with 5-15 years of jail time. Prigozhin got this dispensation in no small part because it was Wagner’s seasoned troops that had achieved Russia’s most notable battlefield victories in an otherwise sputtering invasion. In part, it was because Prigozhin had always been extremely careful not to criticize Putin directly.
This started to change a couple of weeks ago when the Defense Ministry announced that all paramilitary forces fighting in Ukraine would have to sign contracts directly with the ministry by July 1, ending their autonomy and absorbing them into the regular armed forces. Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov said he and his troops would comply; Prigozhin said Wagner would not, claiming his men didn’t want to fight alongside poorly trained conscripts or under the command of Shoigu and Gerasimov.
Then, at a rare public meeting with military bloggers, Putin reiterated the order, backing the ministry over Prigozhin. You’d think that would’ve been the end of it, but instead of taking the loss, Prigozhin doubled down on his refusal to give up control of Wagner – an unprecedented act of direct insubordination against Putin.
At that point, Prigozhin knew the clock was ticking for him. Knowing he was a dead man walking from the moment he disobeyed Putin’s order, he opted to roll the dice in a last-ditch attempt to force the president to reconsider and salvage his position (and possibly his life) – a decision that smacked more of desperation than of rational calculation.
Why did Prigozhin stop before getting to Moscow?
I think both starting and stopping the mutiny can be understood as desperate acts of self-preservation. This will be one for historians to debate, but I’m inclined to believe Prigozhin probably didn’t set out to overthrow Putin in the first place, as he had neither a plan nor the allies to do so. All he wanted was to prevent Wagner from being disbanded and himself from losing his power.
The biggest reason why I believe this is that Prigozhin couldn’t possibly have thought that an outsider like himself could topple the regime with fewer than 5,000 men. Let’s keep in mind that Prigozhin was a creature of Putin: He was built up by, loyal to, and entirely dependent on the Russian president. He was not a security council insider. He did not have a power base in Moscow. He had no one in or near the Kremlin who was prepared to side with him against Putin.
That’s surely one reason why as his Wagner column drew close to Moscow, we saw no defections in the military, the government, or among the elites. And it’s why when he got thrown a lifeline just as he and his men were about to face certain death at the hands of troops reporting to Putin himself (rather than the Ministry of Defense), he grabbed it with both hands.
Prigozhin likely never had a shot of taking the Kremlin – and he and everyone else knew it all along. What he did have was a modest amount of leverage, which explains why he didn’t get killed and why he thought he could pull the stunt off in the first place. The “march for justice” was an ill-advised bargaining tactic to force Putin to cave on the issue of Wagner’s autonomy.
Why did Putin negotiate a surrender instead of just killing Prigozhin?
I think this is mostly a matter of timing.
The war in Ukraine is at a critical juncture for Russia. The Ukrainian counteroffensive is only just getting started, with fewer than three of Ukraine’s 11 battle-ready divisions positioned to attack currently involved in the fighting. Ukraine has yet to attempt to breach any of Russia’s three defensive lines, instead biding its time while conducting shaping operations and probing attacks on the first line of defense. By contrast, the Russian military is already heavily committed to trying to hold back Ukraine’s counteroffensive, and Putin is highly reluctant to order another mobilization.
A battle against Wagner on Russian soil would have distracted – potentially fatally – from Russia’s defense of its front lines, handing Ukraine a unique window of opportunity to strike while Wagner troops, the Russian army, and Kadyrov’s forces were occupied elsewhere.
Plus, by backing down and refraining from killing Prigozhin immediately, Putin lost little that he hadn’t already lost when Prigozhin initially defied him and marched toward Moscow. At the end of the day, Putin got everything he could’ve wished for: Shoigu and Gerasimov are still in their positions, Wagner is coming under Defense Ministry control, and Prigozhin is defanged and in exile. All without televised bloodshed, and without sacrificing much in terms of warfighting effectiveness given that Wagner had already been rotated out of the front.
The only concession Putin made was allowing Prigozhin, whom he called a “traitor” and “terrorist,” to live – for now. But Prigozhin is (reportedly) in Belarus, essentially a non-sovereign vassal of Russia chock-full of Russian spies, soldiers, and assassins. Putin is free to renege on the deal and kill or arrest him at a time of his choosing. I’d be very surprised if Prigozhin is still a free man by the end of the year.
What are the implications for Putin and Russia going forward?
This was by far the most serious threat to Putin’s 23-year rule.
On the one hand, you’re not supposed to be able to defy Putin in Russia this way and get away with it. Yet the men who shot down and killed an estimated 13 Russian pilots on their way to Moscow were pardoned. And the man who openly defied Putin’s orders, discredited his rationale for the war in Ukraine, and whom Putin declared a traitor on public television, is still alive (even if not for long). Putin has jailed and killed people for a lot less, so this makes him look weak before the Russian public and the elites.
On the other hand, Putin’s regime was tested over the weekend, and the regime ultimately held together. Yes, there were a lot of people who didn’t fire to stop Wagner troops from advancing, but there were virtually no defections inside the Russian government, the military, or among elites. The government is still functioning normally, and the war in Ukraine is going the way it did before the mutiny. Putin is more vulnerable on the back of it, but that’s more a long-term than an immediate issue.
In a way, this feels a bit like an extreme version of Jan. 6 in the United States (pardon the comparison): an event that was previously unthinkable, that shook people’s faith in the system, that exposed a structural weakness in domestic institutions, but that changed little in the country the day after.
The likelihood of regime change in Russia remains near zero … until it happens. But these events show that the tail risks are fatter than we thought.
What does this mean for the war in Ukraine?
The Ukrainians will try to take advantage of Russia’s domestic turmoil to make gains in their counteroffensive. Indeed, just in the last two days, they’ve reportedly seen progress in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions (although the significance of these gains so far is marginal).
However, I don’t see the events of the weekend dramatically improving Ukraine’s odds on the battlefield in the near future. With the Wagner threat dissolved, Russia won’t need to shift troops from Ukraine to Russia to deal with them. Likewise, Wagner was not operating in the south where the Ukrainian counteroffensive is focused. So in terms of the actual fighting, beyond the effect that the mutiny might have on Russian morale, the overall military impact at this point is limited.
That said, the incident is a problem for Putin’s credibility with elites and the Russian public, and this political vulnerability could make him more sensitive to major battlefield losses in the coming months. If we get to a point later in the summer or fall where Ukraine starts to threaten Crimea or the land bridge, the risk of a major Russian escalation (such as blowing up the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant or using a tactical nuclear weapon) in response would go up. The only thing more dangerous than a strongman is a weak strongman.
The one lesson from this episode is that when push comes to shove, Putin is singularly focused on his own survival, and he is willing and able to accept any outcome to ensure it. This is an important revealed preference because it speaks to the credibility of his stated goals and so-called “red lines” in Ukraine, which in turn matters for how Ukraine and NATO countries think about escalation.
It means that Putin may be willing to tolerate more aggressive behavior from NATO and Ukraine than we imagined if he thinks retaliation would lower his chances of survival. It also means that Putin could consider any outcome for the war, including negotiations, as long as he thinks he can survive it.
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O Itamaraty fez uma nota lamentando as inundações no Chile:
28 de junho de 2023 Desastres provocados por intensas chuvas no Chile O governo brasileiro manifesta sua solidariedade ao governo e ao povo chilenos, em razão das perdas humanas e materiais provocadas pelas intensas chuvas na região centro-sul do Chile nos últimos dias.
O Itamaraty não foi capaz de fazer uma ÚNICA nota sobre todas as vitimas causadas pelos bombardeios indiscriminados contra alvos civis na Ucrânia:
During the past day, the Russian forces shelled eleven oblasts of Ukraine. Russian attacks The number of casualties due to the Russian attack on Kramatorsk has risen to 11, including three children. 61 people have been injured. According to updated information, the strike was carried out with "Iskander" missiles. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has detained a spotter for the Russian missile strike on Kramatorsk. Yesterday, the man checked whether the café was open and if any visitors were there. He recorded a video and passed the information to the Russian military.
In Poltava Oblast, on the “anniversary” of the missile strike on the "Amstor" shopping center in Kremenchuk, the enemy attacked the Kremenchuk district again. X-22 missiles hit a dacha cooperative. No impact on critical infrastructure were recorded. A child was injured. Cherkasy Oblast experienced an enemy aerial attack during the night. Two combat drones were destroyed. However, two more targeted an empty warehouse. Russian forces shelled border areas of Chernihiv and Sumy Oblasts. In Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Russian forces carried out 77 attacks on 16 towns and villages. There were 40 reports of damage to civilian infrastructure. At least 9 people were injured, and one person died from the injuries sustained. Enemy Shahed drones were shot down over the night in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The Russian army carried out mortar and artillery shelling of at least 8 towns and villages in Kharkiv Oblast. Today, June 28, Russian forces shelled the Vovchansk community, resulting in the deaths of three civilians. In Luhansk Oblast, the enemy conducted 115 shelling attacks and fired 526 shells within a day. The Russians targeted areas in 31 towns and villages of Kherson Oblast within a day. Three people were injured.
