What the Hell Just Happened in Russia?

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Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

When we last left off on Drezner’s World, a Russian paramilitary leader was sending a column of men and armor from Rostov to Moscow, and it sure seemed as though no regular military units were going to stop it.

And then… everyone stood down? The Kremlin announced a deal, stating that it would drop the treason charges against Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. In turn, Progizhin said he was calling off his forces to avoid further bloodshed. Ostensibly this was all mediated by — wait for it — Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. Then, today, the Kremlin teased that Vladimir Putin would deliver a presidential address that would, “without exaggeration, determine the future of Russia." His actual speech proved to be a giant nothingburger, flummoxing those who cover Russia for a living.

So… WTF?! What happens now?

Anyone who tells you they know for sure is either lying or way too self-confident. What follows is my semi-educated guesstimate about what will happen. The tl;dr version is that Putin has been badly weakened, but his opponents and rivals have been weakened further so mostly this will prove to be giant embarrassment to the Russian president.

Let’s start with Putin. This entire episode was, how you say, “not great” for his political standing. Putin had to go on television and acknowledge that the some Russian forces were in open revolt and that Russian government no longer controlled a major city (and logistical hub). Imagine Joe Biden delivering an address on national television pleading for Blackwater forces to show their loyalty, stand down and leave the city of Seattle. As the day continued, Wagner forces encountered only modest opposition, destroying more Russian air assets than Ukrainian forces had dispatched as of late. Moscow went on alert and was locked down.

Prigozhin backing down erases none of that embarrassment. There are reports that Putin left Moscow during the crisis, and the Kremlin has been unable to falsify that claim. It’s tough to come back from that — what makes it even tougher is Russian television proclaiming on Friday that Prigozhin is a criminal but on Saturday stating that he would be permitted to leave for Belarus. Furthermore, the situation left Alexander Lukashenko with enhanced stature. Lukashenko?! No wonder Russian propaganda television sounded bewildered.

Writing in the Atlantic, Tom Nichols concludes:

The Russian dictator has been visibly wounded, and he will now bear the permanent scar of political vulnerability. Instead of looking like a decisive autocrat (or even just a mob boss in command of his crew), Putin left Moscow after issuing a short video in which he was visibly angry and off his usual self-assured game….

[Putin] is now politically weaker than ever. The once unchallengeable czar is no longer invincible. The master of the Kremlin had to make a deal with a convict—again, in Putin’s culture, among the lowest of the low—just to avert the shock and embarrassment of an armed march into the Russian capital while other Russians are fighting on the front lines in Ukraine.

This appears to match the U.S. government’s read of the situation.

This could be a problem, because as Tim Snyder pointed out earlier this month, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine combined with Putin’s repression of the non-violent opposition gave rise to a form of “militarist pluralism” within Russian society. It might be violent and extralegal, but it’s definitely a form of politics:

The initiation of major war opened the way to violent politics inside Russia.  The invasion gave Putin his occasion to totally suppress peaceful protest inside Russia.  Yet when there is no voice and no vote, politics will take violent forms.  For more than a year, people inside Russia have attacked recruitment offices, set fire to installations associated with the war, and blown up oil tanks and the like.  Until the recent drone attacks inside Russia, this has been a story without a storyline throughout the war.  Very possibly some of the people carrying out these actions have connections to Ukrainian military intelligence.  Even so, whoever they are, some of them likely have their own Russian motives….

When you try to generate a system without politics, any politics at all feels like a challenge to the legitimacy of the state.  The war in Ukraine has restarted Russian politics: not necessarily in ways that are pleasant to watch, but following a dynamic that will be difficult to stop.  Ukrainian resistance has revealed the weaknesses of the Putinist attempt to make politics halt.  The denial that Ukraine was a real country created a situation in which Ukraine is now all too real inside Russia itself.  A foreign wars are only spectacle when the other side cannot resist.  A Russian political order built on propaganda generated propagandists who can make their fights public on social media.  And a dictatorship built on managing rivalries begins to look fragile when the rivals are loud and armed.

The more that Russian domestic politics is centered on violence, the greater the risk that the violence puts Putin’s standing at risk.

And yet… I can’t shake the feeling that while Putin might look weaker than ever to the rest of the world, he is in a stronger position domestically than he was a week ago.

How can that be? It is true that Prigozhin’s march on Moscow revealed most Russians to be apathetic to who rules them — exactly as Putin has wanted during his entire tenure. And it’s true that Prigozhin left Rostov to cheers from locals.

As I noted over the weekend, however, Prigozhin was gambling for resurrection because he had already lost status. That he agreed to go to Belarus is a sign that he knew Wagner forces would be unable to actually control Moscow. He simply lacked the manpower. This is entirely consistent with Lisa Gaufman’s observation that, “Prigozhin’s stunt (not a coup) was an elaborate attempt at political communication with the power vertical.” He was the greatest threat to Putin’s power since the 2011 mass protests — and after less than 24 hours of revolt, he left the country.

So even if the Russian state looks wobblier than ever, who would try to topple Putin now? Prigozhin has left the country. Putin’s national security team seem weaker than ever. Maybe there is some ambitious colonel who can mobilize the officer corps, but otherwise I don’t see a force coordinated enough to dislodge Putin and his clan. As the Carnegie Endowment’s Andrew Weiss noted after Progozhin acquiesced:

A key problem [with] the instant analysis of the past 72 hours is that it somehow looks past the fact that Putin's standing within the Russian elite was badly damaged at the beginning of the war and the fact that no one in the gutless, fearful elite wants to get on his bad side. There have been no significant defections from inside the ruling circle. None. No credible alternatives to Putin have emerged. No political heavyweight (such as they are) has condemned Putin's errors in Ukraine.

So I think Putin is safe for now. The question is whether the uncertain future of the Wagner Group enables Ukraine to expand their counteroffensive. If the Armed Forces of Ukraine exploit Russian division and make appreciable gains during their current counteroffensive, it will further substantiate Prigozhin’s claim that Putin’s military advisors are weak and feckless.

That would be very risky for Putin. While it’s true that few Russians were sticking their neck out to support Prigozhin, the fact remains that — as Angela Stent told Axios — neither were there public displays of support for Putin from officials or ordinary citizens: “Everyone was waiting to see which way the wind was blowing.”

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