On Wednesday, a plane believed to be carrying Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, crashed in Russia. According to Russia’s Ministry of Emergency, all 10 people on board were killed.
Prigozhin made global headlines in June, when he took over a regional capital in Russia and sent a column of soldiers to Moscow. He called off the apparent coup in the making on the same day, sending his forces back to their barracks. He had seemingly struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin — but, as many commentators pointed out, that did not mean he was safe from reprisal by Russia or efforts to bring him to justice internationally.
What was the impact of Prigozhin’s brief mutiny? And how would it influence events in Russia — and by extension, Ukraine? In June, Post columnists shared their insight on the remarkable series of events.
David Von Drehle: Even failed coups have consequences
They say a bird that walks and quacks like a duck is probably a duck. Events in Russia that looked like a military coup, and were initially interpreted as a coup by Putin, were probably an attempted coup — until the coup fell apart.
Which coups typically do. In an exhaustive study of coup attempts from 1950 to 2000, scholar Naunihal Singh identified the central challenge for all coup planners. Detailed planning for the attempted overthrow of an authoritarian government is too dangerous. Dictators — such as Putin — organize their entire governments around ferreting out such plans and crushing them. A coup attempt must begin, therefore, with a bold move by a small group, with hopes others will join in. There is no plan, Singh wrote, only hopes and beliefs. “Each individual’s choices are based on his or her beliefs about the likely actions of others”.
As Prigozhin motored up the highway toward Moscow on Saturday, he surely had a sinking feeling. The uprising he apparently hoped to inspire inside the Russian Ministry of Defense was neither up nor rising. Like coup planners in Turkey in 2016 and Venezuela in 2020, Prigozhin issued an invitation to a spontaneous overthrow of the government, but no one showed up.
The wild card in this case was the government’s reaction. Putin evidently had no more confidence than Prigozhin as to the outcome of the clash. Rather than test the loyalty and strength of government forces to crush the uprising, the Russian leader grabbed the first exit he was offered — a sign of weakness that might invite another attempt.
There’s good news and bad news in this. The good news is that Russia’s reckless leaders are not suicidal, which is a welcome quality in a nuclear power. The bad news: A weakened Russia has weakened leaders and is spinning out of control. Putin has taken his country into a disaster, and there is no one in sight to save it.
Max Boot: Prigozhin has made Putin’s weakness clear to everyone
The past few days have been the most tumultuous in Russia’s history since the constitutional crisis in October 1993 when Boris Yeltsin ordered the army to shell the parliament to stop an attempt to oust him. Yeltsin held on to power, but he could never quite claim the same degree of legitimacy again, and within six years, he was gone from office. His handpicked successor, Putin, has now had his own legitimacy undermined by the revolt of Prigozhin and his Wagner Group mercenaries. Whether the damage is fatal remains to be determined.
Putin did not — perhaps could not — mobilize the Russian armed forces to crush the Wagner uprising. Indeed, aside from a few Russian Air Force pilots, the regular military were bystanders even as Prigozhin and his mercenaries seized the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don and headed for the capital. Ordinary people in Rostov cheered the Wagner forces on, showing how little love they have for the man who has ruled their nation with an iron fist for more than two decades. Putin suffered the humiliation of relying on the diplomatic help of his sidekick, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, to avert the kind of street fighting that Moscow last saw in 1993.
Putin will no doubt try to reassert control now. He might well undertake a purge of the government and exact a grim revenge against Prigozhin and his supporters. The Wagner boss would be well-advised to hire a tea-taster and stay away from open windows.
Putin could ultimately emerge at the head of an even stronger dictatorship that launches a Stalinist mobilization to fight Ukraine. Alternatively, his display of weakness might embolden other challengers to the throne from his own inner circle because his mystique of control has been shattered. At this point, we just don’t know what the repercussions will be for Russian politics.
So, too, the fate of the Wagner Group remains unclear. Its fighters might finally have to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry — a demand, first made on June 10, that might have precipitated Prigozhin’s uprising. But disbanding the Wagner Group will lead to a loss of military effectiveness, because it has been one of the few units that has fought with some degree of success in Ukraine (albeit at a staggering cost). At the very least, the infighting in the Kremlin is a distraction for Russian generals who need to concentrate on stopping the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Whatever happens to Prigozhin next, he has clearly struck a chord with his blistering denunciations of the corruption and incompetence that characterize the Putin regime. A petty criminal turned war criminal, Prigozhin is an expert rabble-rouser who has been able to tap into popular dissatisfaction with the Kremlin more effectively than any liberal critic. Even if Prigozhin is gone, the discontent he has revealed will remain an Achilles’ heel for Putin.
David Ignatius: After dodging the bullet, Putin will need to show he’s in control
The mystery of this story is what Prigozhin expected would happen in his march on Moscow. The Wagner militia leader was so talkative about his plans that U.S. intelligence officers learned of the plot last week. Prigozhin believed he had support. That’s what must haunt Putin now. How far did this conspiracy go?
Prigozhin gave some hints about how his support rose — and then collapsed — in his videotaped statement Monday. Bragging of his race toward Moscow on Saturday, he said that as he approached the capital, “all of the military facilities along the route were blocked and neutralized. … All military personnel who saw us during the march supported us”.
Then what happened? When he was less than 200 kilometers away, he “conducted reconnaissance of the area, and it was evident that a lot of blood would be shed if we continued”.
What that tells us is that Priogzhin realized the military and security backing he had expected in his “march of justice” had vanished. Moving forward would have meant slaughter for his forces. So, he reversed course — and made an amnesty deal for himself and his forces through his friend Lukashenko.
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA station chief in Moscow, argues that Prigozhin “surrendered when he realized that the cavalry wasn’t going to arrive”. Prigozhin’s forces were cheered when they seized Russian command headquarters in Rostov-on-Don early Saturday — not surprisingly, as they have been the bravest and most successful Russian fighters in Ukraine. But by the time he neared Moscow, Putin had broken the back of his rebellion.
Now, the inquisition begins. Mowatt-Larssen explains: “Putin has to learn every detail of how far and deep this plot reached in the military and special services. This was in the works for at least a couple of weeks. Who was Prigozhin talking to? Who promised their support? Who switched sides in the heat of the moment?”
Prigozhin is arrogant, but he’s no fool. He tried Monday to reassure Putin that he had no intention “to overthrow the government”. And he dressed up last weekend’s armed assault as a “fight against bureaucracy and other ailments that exist in our country today”. But he must understand that he will survive only at Putin’s sufferance. He shot at the king and missed.
Putin’s vulnerabilities were vividly on display last weekend, but so were his uncanny survival skills. He got inside Prigozhin’s conspiratorial plot and stopped it. The Russian leader is a mysterious figure, far more so than the cartoon versions sketched by his enemies. He is Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a villain whose hands drip with the blood of his victims. But he’s also Hamlet, the vain, self-absorbed prince who delayed taking action against his enemies until it was nearly too late.
Putin will need to show that he’s in command now, after this near-death experience. That’s the bad news for Ukraine and Russia both.
Eugene Robinson: Putin is likely to survive this crisis
I wouldn’t count Putin out just yet. This weekend’s armed rebellion might be the toughest challenge he has faced in his two-plus decades as Russia’s modern-day czar, but he looks likely to survive, at least for now. And he still gets to control his own fate.
The revolt by the mercenary butcher Prigozhin did reveal Putin’s regime to be more brittle than it had appeared from afar. But in the end, Prigozhin was the one who blinked. If Russian soldiers and citizens had rallied to his cause and joined him as his convoy rolled toward Moscow, perhaps he wouldn’t have turned back. But his hardened mercenaries — Prigozhin claims his Wagner forces number 25,000; British intelligence reportedly puts the number closer to 8,000 — would have been met by a bigger force, including Chechen soldiers with the mission to kill first and ask questions later.
Prigozhin announced to not just the broader world but also, critically, the Russian people the inconvenient truth about Putin’s meat-grinder of a war in Ukraine: that Kyiv posed no threat to Russia, making this a war not of necessity but of choice. The Wagner Group warlord who rose to prominence as “Putin’s Chef” has the makings of a folk hero but not the subtlety and cunning of a Russian leader. Imagine a scenario in which he somehow toppled Putin. Prigozhin, a very bad man, has called for Russia to become more of a totalitarian state like North Korea — hardly a development that the Russian people, or the international community, would welcome.
Prigozhin, who surfaced in a video on Monday, claims his Wagner forces will operate from Belarus. Here are some facts not to be forgotten: The Russian military establishment Prigozhin tried to topple is still intact, at least for now. The future of his Wagner Group, the source of his money and power, remains up in the air. And wherever he ends up, Prigozhin will always have to worry about the bad luck that seems to mysteriously befall so many of Putin’s enemies — they tend to fall out of high windows or suddenly become desperately ill from exotic poisons.
Putin, meanwhile, can portray his decision to grant the rebels amnesty as an act of generosity, not a sign of weakness.
In brief remarks Monday, Putin said the “armed rebellion would have been suppressed”. Perhaps Putin will strike out at some civilian target in Ukraine to demonstrate that he is still large and in charge. But perhaps not. Maybe he will continue the same grinding war of attrition he has been fighting for the better part of a year, not really trying to take more Ukrainian territory but fiercely defending what he has already seized. Ukraine’s brave forces are encountering defensive emplacements — trenches and minefields — that are no easier to overrun today than they were last week.
If there are mutinies in the regular army or if Russian public opinion turns decisively against the war, Putin will have to make adjustments. But he’s still in the driver’s seat. Prigozhin tried, but failed, to dislodge him.
Charles Lane: Prigozhin is the only Russian to publicly speak the truth
Much remains to be learned about the mutiny against Putin’s regime by the Wagner Group leader Prigozhin. But we know Prigozhin did one thing that might threaten the Russian regime long after his uprising ended: He told the truth.
In a 30-minute interview on Friday, Prigozhin debunked every rationale Putin has given for his aggression against Ukraine. “The armed forces of Ukraine were not going to attack Russia with the NATO bloc”, he said. (Note that this rebuts, albeit implicitly, those in the United States and Europe who accuse the West of provoking Putin.)
Also, he said, the invasion “was not needed to return our Russian citizens and not to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine”. Rather, the war — Prigozhin used that forbidden word, not the official euphemism, “special military operation” — was a corrupt venture that “oligarchs” launched. “They were stealing loads in Donbas, they wanted more”.
Prigozhin has not only called out the lies and errors of Russia’s leadership but also praised the conduct of the other side. In a June 5 video, he unfavorably contrasted Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s deskbound ways with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s willingness to visit front-line units. Prigozhin even acknowledged that most civilians living under Russian occupation in southeastern Ukraine will support the Ukrainian army if it breaks through Russian lines.
These words cannot be unsaid. They cannot be unheard.
To be sure, the man who uttered them is anything but an unimpeachable witness, considering his involvement in the Putin regime’s violence and deceit. Monday, he disavowed any intent to topple Putin. No one should imagine that Prigozhin’s outspoken criticism implies that he wants to end the war.
And yet his outbursts have credibility because they represent an insider view that corresponds to the reality that ordinary Russians see all around them.
For those Russians, it must have been exhilarating to hear someone, anyone, even a notorious thug such as Prigozhin, say what so many of them are thinking. Perhaps this helps explain why Russians’ online searches for his name outnumbered those for “Vladimir Putin” in the weeks leading up to his mutiny, according to Verstka, an independent Russian media outfit, or why the people of Rostov-on-Don, the front-line city 60 miles from Ukraine, turned out to welcome him and his Wagner troops.
In 1978, at a time when communist ideology seemed dominant in Czechoslovakia, the dissident playwright Vaclav Havel insisted that truth still exercised a mysterious, but latent, power.
It can unexpectedly “issue forth … in something visible: a real political act or event, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest, a sharp conflict inside an apparently monolithic power structure, or simply an irrepressible transformation in the social and intellectual climate”, Havel wrote. “And since all genuine problems and matters of critical importance are hidden beneath a thick crust of lies, it is never quite clear when the proverbial last straw will fall, or what that straw will be”.
Spy, oligarch, warlord — Prigozhin was an unlikely candidate to confirm Havel’s prophecy. But in a way, he did.
Jason Willick: Chances for escalation in Ukraine have gone up
As the weekend events in Russia illustrate, no one can predict the course of intra-Russian power struggles. But I do think it’s possible to draw one conclusion about the war in Ukraine: The Prigozhin mutiny increases the incentives for escalation on all sides.
First, the West. The mutiny took place a few weeks into Ukraine’s highly anticipated counteroffensive. In the days before the mutiny, we were starting to see signs of disappointment in the counteroffensive’s early progress. Russian lines appeared to be holding; Ukrainian assaults largely hadn’t broken through.
If that sense of stalemate had persisted, Western pressure on Ukraine to reach at least a temporary settlement with Russia would have built. The mutiny will give Ukraine more running room. For the West, Prigozhin’s abandoned revolt is evidence of the brittleness of Putin’s regime. It shows that sustaining the war is putting pressure on the Kremlin in visible and invisible ways, even if the lines of territorial control in Ukraine remain roughly the same. U.S. and other NATO leaders arguing for greater military investment in Ukraine will now win arguments they might otherwise have lost.
I would also expect Russia to double down on its commitment to the war. Failed revolts tend to increase repression, and this could push Russia further down the road to totalitarianism. Some observers might be overstating Putin’s weakness — he did suppress the mutiny quickly, after all — but the spectacle has clearly dented his image of control. The viability of his regime is now even more tightly bound up with its war in Ukraine — and his appetite for risk could grow.
It’s going to be a long war. And it might get worse before it gets better.
Josh Rogin: Prigozhin’s failed gambit is an opportunity for the West
The ultimate fate of the Wagner Group and its founder Prigozhin is still unknown. What’s clear is that Wagner is in disarray. The Russian Defense Ministry is reportedly set to absorb Wagner fighters in Ukraine into its command structure. Prigozhin is (allegedly) headed to exile in Belarus.
That doesn’t settle the question of what will happen with Wagner’s myriad military and industrial operations in places such as Syria, the Central African Republic, Mali, Libya, Sudan and Venezuela, to name just a few. For years, Prigozhin’s mercenaries have been acting as semi-deniable agents of the Kremlin around the world, committing atrocities while fomenting instability and corruption along the way.
The current chaos provides the best chance yet for the United States and Europe to get their act together and do what should have been done years ago — shut down Wagner’s international network of armed intervention and crime. With Prigozhin seemingly sidelined and his commanders around the world scattered and confused, his company is vulnerable like never before.
For years, Wagner has used its network of shell companies, its army of international lawyers and financiers, and its purported autonomy from the Russian state to avoid accountability for its crimes, said Candace Rondeaux, senior director for the Future Frontlines program at New America and professor with the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University.
“Three U.S. presidents have failed to fully comprehend this threat and come up with a plan to address it comprehensively”, she told me. “But now the jig is up when it comes to sanctions circumvention for Wagner. Everyone smells blood in the water”.
Although Wagner was first placed under sanctions in 2017 for its actions in Ukraine, only this year did the U.S. Treasury Department recognize its worldwide reach by designating it as a “transnational criminal organization”. In May, the federal government imposed sanctions on Wagner’s top commander in Mali, which has become a hub for Wagner’s efforts to funnel weapons into Ukraine, as well as some of Wagner’s international enablers. Several other Western countries have followed suit.
Prigozhin was known to demand payment from Wagner’s African mining interests and other shady businesses in gold, diamonds and commodities such as oil and gas. The reason: fear of sanctions. But there’s a lot more that can and should be done. Bipartisan legislation pending in Congress called the Harm (Holding Accountable Russian Mercenaries) Act would seek to compel the Biden administration to designate Wagner as a “foreign terrorist organization”. That’s just one idea.
Now that the Kremlin can no longer pretend Wagner is a separate entity, Russian government and defense officials must also be held accountable for Wagner’s worldwide crimes, which include credible allegations of mass murder, torture, rape and other atrocities. Wagner is down but not out. It’s time to put this criminal organization out of business once and for all.
Megan McArdle: Turmoil in Russia shows the fragility of illiberalism
I don’t know what the events of this past weekend mean for Russia. But I have been thinking a lot about the message they should send to the rest of us about the dangers of illiberalism.
Even in America, a beacon of liberal values for over two centuries, commitment to liberalism waxes and wanes. Recently, it has been waning on both ends of the political spectrum. In its zeal to protect minorities, a significant fraction of the left has abandoned free speech and religious liberty in favor of speech codes, “disinformation” crackdowns and cancel culture. Meanwhile, as people on the right have grown more alarmed by critical race theory and gender ideology, some have embraced the idea that only a strongman such as Donald Trump — or Hungary’s Viktor Orban or, yes, Putin — can hold back the Rainbow Horde.
Readers will have strong opinions about the moral differences between these two positions. Logically, though, both sides make the same argument: Our opponents are dangerously wrong, maybe existentially wrong, and must be stopped. At this critical historical juncture, we cannot afford dissent or procedural niceties. They must be drummed from the public square, their views must be made anathema, and any institutions they control must be discredited or destroyed.
What happened in Russia over the weekend illustrates just why this way of thinking is so flawed. Illiberal regimes are not merely unpleasantly oppressive; they are at constant risk of catastrophic failure.
Energetic suppression of dissent creates apparent harmony, but this is an expensive fake. Fake because, as the aphorism goes, “one convinced against their will is of the same opinion still”. Expensive because it becomes impossible to know what people believe; if you ask them, they will simply parrot the officially approved answer.
Initially, this might work, because no one knows which parrots actually believe the party line, and this makes it hard for any opposition to organize. But if the opposition grows to become a secret majority, the country becomes vulnerable to a sudden preference cascade: Folks realize that their neighbors agree with them, and the official narrative collapses.
Nominally, Putin controls a massive army, a substantial police force and a population that returned him to office in 2018 with a resounding 77 percent of the vote. But when push came to shove, those same folks were indifferent between him and a murderous warlord — or, at least, didn’t care enough about the distinction to risk getting shot. Putin survived, but the risk to his regime has risen now that it is clear how little actual support he has.
Dictators understand this problem, which is why their regimes tend to get worse over time: The more thoroughly you suppress dissent, the greater the risk that even a tiny expression of defiance will trigger a preference cascade.
The inherent fragility of authoritarianism does not mean liberalism is destined to always win out; this is a dangerous delusion that, in the years after the Berlin Wall fell, helped lay the groundwork for Putin and his ilk. Liberal institutions, and the social trust that undergirds them, are hard to build from scratch, so when one authoritarian regime is torn down, it is easily replaced by another.
Which is precisely why it is folly for liberal societies to flirt with illiberalism: Even a temporary resort to repression is apt to be permanently catastrophic for everyone.