Prime Minister Vladimir Putin tours the new factory Concord, which supplies pre-prepared meals to schools with Yevgeny Prigozhin. September 20, 2010.
Much of the media took glee in reporting the recent aborted mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin. But what does an unstable Russia mean for America? Would Prigozhin’s leadership make the world more or less safe for Americans? Emma Ashford and Matt Kroenig discuss what it all means in Foreign Policy:
Matt Kroenig: Hi, Emma. It’s been a bit of a slow news week, and it’s therefore hard to decide what to debate in our column, but this week I thought we could cover, I don’t know, maybe the armed insurrection in Russia?
Emma Ashford: Well, my thoughts are a bit disorganized; like most Russia watchers, I didn’t get a lot of sleep this weekend!
But my goodness, what a shocking turn of events. If you’ve been living under a rock, here are the basics: On Friday, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian state-backed mercenary organization Wagner Group, escalated his war of words with senior Russian military commanders into action. He mutinied, and his forces seized the city of Rostov-on-Don— including its pivotal military headquarters—and drove much of the way to Moscow before a deal orchestrated by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko finally turned them around.
It was the biggest sign of instability we’ve seen in Russia since the 1993 coup attempt, and I have been frankly shocked by the folks in Washington celebrating Prigozhin’s actions, rather than worrying about the potential consequences.
MK: I was shocked at first, too. And then I wasn’t. Many people, including me, have predicted that the collapse of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime would be one potential outcome of the stalled war in Ukraine. It reminded me that, occasionally, unlikely foreign-policy scenarios do come to pass.
Then I was also surprised by how suddenly it all ended. I was mentally preparing for days, weeks, maybe even years of civil war in Russia, but the entire episode concluded in just about 24 hours.
I don’t know that I was “celebrating” Prigozhin, but I did see several opportunities to advance U.S. and Western interests if the mutiny had continued, and I was somewhat disappointed to see Putin reestablish control so quickly.
EA: I think you are misinterpreting it a bit. Prigozhin was not trying to overthrow Putin; that much is obvious from his recorded statements during the incident. If anything, the impression he gave was that he was trying to save Putin from the incompetent generals who are losing the war. That’s an assessment that’s since been bolstered by the disappearance of Gen. Sergei Surovikin, a man known for his brutality and for being one of the few competent military leaders of the Russian campaign so far. Surovikin denounced Prigozhin early in the mutiny, but intelligence leaks now suggest that he might have had foreknowledge of the event. Certainly, he would have stood to gain from the removal of Russia’s current incompetent military leaders.
Prigozhin, meanwhile, didn’t even mention Putin until well into the incident—after Putin effectively denounced him—and it was clear from the confusion and from the eventual end to the incident that he really didn’t plan a coup. It was more of a mutiny. Prigozhin expected that regular Russian military units would back him up, and while many stood aside, no senior officials defected from Putin.
I’m skeptical that any of this is good for Western interests. Perhaps the chaos will allow Ukraine to make some battlefield gains? But even that doesn’t seem to have happened.
MK: It’s correct that Prigozhin was going after the Russian military leadership, not Putin. But a full-scale civil war between Wagner and the Russian military would not be good for Putin and the stability of his regime.
And a destabilized Russia could have presented several opportunities. With Russian military and Wagner forces fighting each other, it would have been easier for Ukraine to win the war and take back all of its sovereign territory, including Crimea. With Russia distracted and focused internally, it could have been easier to fast-track Ukraine’s NATO membership, including possibly by the July NATO summit in Vilnius. And the biggest defense problem facing the United States is how to deter China and Russia—two nuclear-armed great powers increasingly aligned—at the same time. That problem is a lot easier to manage with Russia off the chessboard.
Of course, there would have been serious risks as well—like the danger of loose Russian nukes. And this threat has still not entirely disappeared. But on balance, I think U.S. interests are better served by a Russia that is too weak than one that is too strong.
EA: Let me give you some reasons why we should be worried. First, whoever replaces Putin, particularly in the context of this war, is likely to be worse. The liberal opposition has been neutered, and the most powerful remaining political force in Russia is the pro-war right. Putin, strange though it sounds, is not as extreme as many of them. Prigozhin wasn’t really a viable candidate to replace Putin anyway, as he has no power base of his own in Russian politics aside from his mercenaries. But could you imagine someone more politically connected and with his views in the Kremlin? It would be disastrous.
Second, during the 1991 coup attempt against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, then-U.S. President George H. W. Bush’s administration worried about one thing. It was the same thing that the Clinton administration worried about during the 1993 coup attempt against Russia’s president, Boris Yeltsin: loose nukes.
I think you’re underplaying it. No one wants to mess around with civil unrest in a nuclear power. The last time a Russian government collapsed under pressure of war and revolution, it gave the world a chaotic civil war and the rise of the Soviet Union. You really want to repeat that with nuclear weapons?
And finally, Putin has been weakened politically by this stunt. There’s a lot of good research on authoritarian leaders—particularly those dependent on a cult of personality—who face challenges to their rule or who risk losing in war. Those challenges don’t typically make them more likely to compromise. They make them more likely to double down, doing what scholars call “gambling for resurrection.” In short: If a leader expects that losing a war will hurt them politically, they have every incentive to keep fighting in the hope, however slim, that they can turn things around.
MK: I agree those are real risks. Indeed, I worried that this could become history’s first nuclear civil war. Would Prigozhin try to seize Russian nukes? Would the Russian military be tempted to nuke Wagner forces? Fortunately, we did not find out this time, but the risk remains. Prigozhin is in Belarus, where Putin has stationed nuclear weapons. What if Prigozhin tries to overthrow Lukashenko or conspires with him to stand up to Putin? Presumably, they would both like to be less beholden to the Kremlin.
But Putin was weakened by the mutiny even if this one failed in the end. I think it is now more likely that we see future internal threats to Putin’s rule.
EA: I agree with that. I just think it won’t necessarily be good for the United States.
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