Once again Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has taken a turn he never expected. The Russian leader’s brief speech denouncing the Wagner group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin and his significant 24-hour mutiny, called off late on Saturday, showed he knows just how dangerous the situation could be for him. If he had a convincing plan for how to deal with it, he didn’t share it.
Putin compared Prigozhin’s actions to the “intrigues” that he said brought down the Russian army, and then the state itself, in 1917. He wasn’t wrong – the rebellion was not unlike the way Russian army units left the front en masse during that military collapse.
Putin’s defiant rhetoric promising to deal firmly with this treachery came after weeks of silence over the growing confrontation between Prigozhin and Russia’s regular military. Invoking what happened in 1917 may mean that Putin realised he had left this too late, and allowed a real challenge to the stability of his power in Russia to develop.
Prigozhin, and the forces with him, were in no position to challenge Putin’s grip on power directly, even if they had wanted to. But indirectly, they have already shown the weakness of that grip. An armed force roamed southern Russia demanding recognition from the state authorities. That’s a long way from the unity of power that Putin had worked so long to enforce.
Wagner had a longstanding close relationship with Russia’s military intelligence special forces, including shared bases and facilities. It was hard to know which way those forces would jump – or any of the other units deployed to block moves by Wagner’s main force further into Russia and towards Moscow. Units or groups from any of Russia’s military, paramilitary or intelligence organisations adjusting their allegiance to side with Prigozhin – or simply refusing to obstruct him – could have shifted the power balance swiftly.
While it’s good news for Kyiv that some of Russia’s forces have been temporarily distracted, nobody should imagine that this development will lessen the threat to Ukraine and to Europe. Prigozhin’s argument is not with the war – it’s with how, and why, it is fought. This is a confrontation between some of the worst people in the world, in a dispute over how to destroy Ukraine the most efficiently.
Ukraine is watching for an opportunity to turn Russia’s internal chaos into advantage on the frontline. Even with Prigozhin’s mutiny halted, it is bound to sow confusion and uncertainty among Russian soldiers and commanders more widely – and Ukrainian information operations should be adept at exploiting and increasing it.
Russia moved to restrict internet access to reduce the reach of Prigozhin’s announcements. There was a delicious irony in the Russian authorities complaining about Wagner’s domination of the media narrative after all the years when Prigozhin was commissioned by Russia to run “troll farms” to do just that.
This demonstration of Russia’s fragility only re-emphasises how vital it is to continue unqualified support for Ukraine. The suggestion that Russia cannot be defeated, and therefore it is better not to try and instead “negotiated settlement” is the only way forward, has been comprehensively torpedoed by this internal strife. But this is a temporary setback for Russia – and urgently increased support for Ukraine has the potential to bring about a permanent solution.
Prigozhin’s challenge to Moscow was a confrontation between a psychopath leading a gang of murderous criminals and a mafia boss sitting in the Kremlin and dividing Russia’s riches between his cronies. But a distracted, weakened Russia is good news for everybody else.
Keir Giles works with the Russia and Eurasia programme of Chatham House; he is the author of Russia’s War on Everybody
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