The bottom line is we don’t know.
This seems an odd way to start an analysis, I’m sure.
The problem is that nobody, including myself, is an expert on Russian geopolitical matters. Not even the Russians. Our judgments there for are pretty much limited to guesswork based on Russian governmental history.
Given what we know of that, under normal circumstances the leader of the Wagner group, one Yevgeny Prigozhin, would be carrying around a few extra ounces of lead in his skull. As it is, that didn’t happen… which of itself suggests that this might be some kind of scam set up between him and Putin.
Either way, if the coup is genuine or fake, the smart money is on the idea that Putin is in some kind of political trouble at home.
He’s not in trouble from the Russian people, mind you, whom he has never cared about anyway. Rather, if he’s in trouble it’s from power players within his own pyramid. Russia’s elite, if you will.
You got to figure… if it’s true that there was an actual attempt to overthrow the current power structure, he’s obviously a trouble. If, on the other hand,it was fake, he at least thinks he’s in trouble and is trying to sort it out. There’s no way he’d go through the trouble with setting this up unless he thought he was in trouble.
One thing we can be certain of…Putin’s vulnerabilities both politically and militarily, have been exposed in this affair.
Some of you will remember Fred Thompson’s line in Hunt for Red October… “Russians don’t take a dump without a plan”.
It’s a nearly sure bet that Prigozhin would not have made this move unilaterally. He had backing, and urging, from elsewhere within the Russian hierarchy, and more than one individual within that hierarchy. Without support from that hierarchy, Putin would not survive. He understands this. Disappearing Prigozhin would not strengthen Putin’s position. So that didn’t happen.
The other thing we can be fairly well sure of is that this marks the end of his action in Ukraine. The Russian military simply can’t get the job done. Recent history, you would think, would have indicated that to him, but perhaps he’s too loaded up on pride. In an event, Wagner represented something on the order of 50,000 men. Granted, poorly trained men as Russian conscripts usually are.
But, here’s the thing. If you couldn’t get the job done with those 50,000 men, certainly you’re not going to get the job done lacking those 50,000 troops. Sorry, Vladimir, it’s just not going to happen.
And perhaps that’s the other thing here. It seems reasonable to suggest the possibility that Putin recognizes that he’s not getting anywhere with his Ukrainian action, and can blame unrest in the ranks for that inability. Lose the war he brought and still save face being the target.
That in turn, suggests that support for Putin has been fading for some time because of his Ukrainian failures. Put simply, if he’s trying to save face, it’s because he needs to do that.
At the very least this whole thing was a power play, but set up by whom and for the benefit of whom, we don’t know. This has always been the nature of Russian politics both domestic and global.
