Vladimir Putin has vowed to punish Yevgeny Prigozhin for “betrayal” of the warlord’s armed uprising. However, the former Kremlin caterer and his Wagner group appear to have escaped any harsh consequences after launching Russia’s first attempted coup in three decades.
Prigozhin’s failed putsch ended abruptly, but it still exposed deep flaws at the heart of Putin’s regime, calling the Russian president’s invasion of Ukraine seriously questionable, and raising the specter of state collapse if chaos will boil over again, people close to the Kremlin told the Financial Times.
“This is a huge embarrassment for Putin, of course. That’s clear,” said a Russian oligarch who has known the president since the 1990s. “Thousands of people without any resistance from Rostov almost to Moscow, and no one can do anything. THEN [Putin] announced that they would be punished, and they were not. That is definitely a sign of weakness.”
At the root of the rebellion lies frustration within the Russian armed forces with how Putin has handled the entire invasion of Ukraine – until a row between paramilitaries and regular armed forces nearly brought down the state. The Russian army and security services were unable to stop Prigozhin’s revolt.
The ease with which Wagner launched his uprising, the lack of resistance it encountered from other security forces and the rapturous reception its fighters met in the southern city of Rostov as they stopped the “harms . [Putin’s] reputation domestically”, said Alexei Venediktov, the well-connected former editor of Ekho Moskvy radio station.
“It turns out that you can start a revolt against the president, and be pardoned. That means the president is not very strong.”
The extraordinary events have led even ardent supporters of the invasion to publicly question Russia’s justification for it and worry that further shocks may follow.
“The whole world has seen that Russia is on the verge of a terrible political crisis,” Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin spin-doctor and MP, wrote on Telegram. “Yes, the putsch did not succeed, but the putsch has fundamental reasons behind it. And if the reasons remain, the putsch can happen again. And it will be successful.”
Currently, the Kremlin says that it extinguished the threat from Prigozhin after the warlord agreed to leave Russia for Belarus in exchange for a promise not to prosecute him or Wagner warrior.
On Sunday, Russian state media tried to show life going on as mostly normal. Municipal workers clamored to repair highways damaged by Wagner’s advance, while Russian forces retook the command center in Rostov that Wagner had briefly seized the previous day.
But Russia’s attempt to brush off the incident as an inconvenient blip belies the deep problems the invasion of Ukraine has created for Putin’s rule.
“You can’t see it as anything but a sign of weakness and degradation,” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist. “This is not some kind of unexpected one-off event or external shock. This is part and parcel of the war,” he said.
The Kremlin insisted on Saturday that Prigozhin’s resignation had no impact on its handling of the war. But Wagner’s prominent role on the front lines was the result of how Russia mishandled the invasion.
Originally formed to fight covertly in conflicts around the world, Putin redeployed Wagner’s men to Ukraine when the invasion plan failed. He allowed Prigozhin to swell his ranks by personally signing pardons for convicted criminals who had joined to fight.
“They started a war that they didn’t have to do, they couldn’t do it right, and they decided to resort to excess by allowing him to amass an army of prisoners,” Schulmann said. “He’s become a political actor, and they have to deal with it. One thing leads to another.”
Putin’s reluctance to end Prigozhin’s months-long public conflict with the defense ministry shows the former caterer is convinced he is good enough to succeed in his mutiny attempt, according to people close to the Kremlin.
But the episode also proved disastrous for Prigozhin after he failed to secure the resignations of defense minister Sergei Shoigu or Valery Gerasimov, commander of Russia’s invasion forces.
Some of Wagner’s troops will sign contracts with the defense ministry, the Kremlin said. That amounts to a disgrace after Prigozhin said his team would never submit themselves to Shoigu – a move that would rob him of the money and influence that only comes from answering to Putin personally.
Once the uprising began, Prigozhin appeared to have little idea how to succeed, according to a person who has known the warlord since the early 1990s.
“I don’t think he has anything in particular in mind. He just decided to go and convince Putin that he should keep all the money they took from him,” the person said. “Then the situation is completely out of control.”
“At some point he realized he didn’t know what to do next. You go to Moscow, and what? You open the doors of a dozen prisons, some unimaginable freaks come out, the country goes to shit, and then you get to the Kremlin. . . and you don’t know what to do.”
The embarrassing episode is likely to prompt Putin to dismantle Wagner and ensure that it no longer poses a threat to the state, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
“They promised not to touch anyone, but I think it is possible that someone will be imprisoned, or die in mysterious circumstances, to scare others,” Gabuev said. “Putin should now realize how weak the system is and try to fix it.”
Much remains unclear as to exactly how Russia convinced Prigozhin to step down, with many in Russia’s elite suspecting that Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, who allegedly brokered the deal, was a stand-in. -in for strong Russian numbers.
“Everyone wants to call [Prigozhin] and make a deal. And in the end they found a more reasonable middleman in the form of Luka, who saw a way for both sides to back down,” said the person close to Prigozhin.
On Monday, however, state media reported that Prigozhin was still facing charges, adding further uncertainty after a febrile weekend.
After failing to stop the uprising, Russia’s elite are unlikely to escape unscathed, with Putin now aware of the threat to his own power.
“This is a colossal counterintelligence failure. The CIA knew it was coming, and your own secret service didn’t know or didn’t report it. So he’s going to tighten the screws and keep those elite,” said Gabuev.
But even wholesale reforms may not be enough to restore order, the oligarch said. After Russia’s war effort began to falter last year, many in Russia’s elite began to discuss the possibility of a “time of trouble”, a repeat of the long, violent political crisis of the early in the 17th century when different factions vied for the throne.
But even then, the oligarch said, “if this starts I expect the army to intervene immediately. And they didn’t. That was a surprise.”
