The Prigozhin Debacle: A Damage Assessment

Split image of Yevgeny Prigozhin and Vladimir Putin, courtesy of Newsweek

It was a high stakes weekend for the Russian state and particularly for its president, Vladimir Putin, who faced a surprise armed mutiny by one of the most fearsome military groups in the country: the Wagner Group of mercenaries, led by his one-time ally, Yevgeny Prigozhin. On Saturday, Prigozhin made a fateful decision to turn upon the Ministry of Defense, which he claimed had attacked his own forces with missiles. He ordered a massive convoy to cross the border from Ukraine back into Russia, which at the time felt like a modern-day Rubicon moment.

Prigozhin’s forces quickly seized a military command center in Rostov and then pushed rapidly toward the capital of Moscow, which appeared decidedly unready for the sudden onslaught. The advancing mercenaries were met with only limited resistance. The world held its collective breath as it waited to see if Prigozhin would truly attack his fellow countrymen with a battle in the very streets of Moscow.

We all know what happened next: nothing. Just some 200 kilometers from the Kremlin itself, the Wagner convoy halted, with news that Prigozhin had accepted a deal brokered by another Putin ally, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. As part of the eleventh hour agreement, charges against Prigozhin would be dropped and he would be permitted to relocate to Belarus, and there would be amnesty for all Wagner forces who had taken part in the mutiny.

Without knowing whether the deal will hold—and there are now widespread reports that the charges against Prigozhin may not be dropped after all, while Prigozhin himself has yet to resurface beyond audio file drops—we can already form some assessments about the impact of this dramatic series of events. I’ve read a good number of expert takes, and for today I selected three that I want to summarize and amplify here. They respectively address what this all might mean Putin’s hold on power, for the prospects of a negotiated settlement, and for the war in Ukraine overall.

Spoiler alert: It’s pretty bad for Putin. Let's dive in.

Assessment: Putin’s ability to control rival factions is in serious doubt

For more than two decades, Putin has been able to maintain power in Russia by deftly playing rivals off against one another. He brought the oligarchs to heel, even though they once effectively controlled the country, by rewarding those loyal to him with massive wealth while brutally eliminating any who opposed him. His ruling style resembled that of a criminal kingpin surrounded by thugs, each jealous of each other’s access and power.

The grand bargain, as explained by Anton Troianovski in his New York Times OpEd, was this: Putin would guarantee the oligarchs’ wealth and security, and they would not oppose his rule in any way. 

At times, it seemed Putin even relished and encouraged the infighting, granting overlapping powers and assigning ambiguous levels of control and authority to his top allies and ministers in a precarious balance that kept them scrapping at one another instead of gunning for him. Thus, when Prigozhin began a nasty war of words criticizing the Russian military leadership and accusing them of intentionally starving his men of supplies and ammunition, Putin did little to nothing to tamp it down.

But with Prigozhin, Putin badly miscalculated how far the mad “chef” would take things, once it appeared the Wagner Group’s ability to act independently was being forced to an end. Prigozhin’s wild gambit took him and his private army all the way to the edge of Moscow, endangering the very power center and the lives and property of Putin’s most elite friends. While the immediate threat was defused at the last moment, these elites understood that the grand bargain had been violated: Blind loyalty to Putin no longer guaranteed security and wealth for his allies.

Without the assurance of political stability and security that were Putin’s hallmarks for two decades, his continued power is of diminished value to many around him. And that is a real problem for the Russian president.

Assessment: Putin will back down, under the right pressure

Ever since Putin launched the invasion and war in Ukraine some 16 months ago, it has been common to assume that Putin would never retreat and never back down, at least without some major territorial concessions that allowed him to claim a win. His accepted image was of a seemingly maniacally tough Russian leader, someone who had gambled his entire reputation on the invasion and wouldn’t ever readily admit defeat, no matter how bad the situation got.

And yet, as former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and now Stanford professor Michael McFaul astutely noted, that image of the unflinching despot is now shattered. “He didn't escalate. He didn't need a face-saving off-ramp to declare victory. When facing the possibility of really losing to Wagner mercenaries coming into Moscow, he just capitulated,” wrote McFaul. ”Instead of doubling down with more force to crush the mutiny, Putin accepted humiliation instead. He was the rat trapped in the corner that so many Putinologists have told us to fear.”

That has major implications for how we should think about the ongoing war. “The lesson for the war in Ukraine is clear,” McFaul continued. “Putin is more likely to negotiate and end his war if he is losing on the battlefield. Those who have argued that Ukraine must not attack Crimea for fear of triggering escalation must now reevaluate that hypothesis. The sooner Putin fears he is losing the war, the faster he will negotiate.”

This will add to the argument that the West ought to continue to increase Ukraine’s offensive military capabilities and should not discourage the country from seeking to retake territories lost ten years ago to Russia, including Crimea. After all, if Putin is unwilling to stand up and take on one of his own mutinying leaders, few should take seriously his threats to escalate the war should Ukraine expand its own war ambitions. If anything, the Prigozhin incident shows that Putin responds to shows of strength by seeking negotiations and concessions. It follows that strength and aggression is what the West should help Ukraine deliver in order to achieve a negotiated settlement.

I would add one note of caution. Putin should not be trusted at his word, and Prigozhin may have been foolish to do so without some kind of leverage or insurance policy. Whatever negotiated end to the war might result, it needs to come with similar insurance.

Assessment: The Russian infighting benefits Ukraine in the war

This last point may feel a bit self-evident, because of course if the Russians are in disarray and are fighting amongst themselves, this opens opportunities for the Ukrainians to press forward on their counter-offensive in the Donbas. But it helps to clarify why exactly this is.

The removal of Wagner Group forces from the front lines in Ukraine leaves a gaping hole in the Russian defensive positions that the Ukrainian military can and should exploit. As Kim Dozier of the Military Times noted on CNN, “I’m thinking about the Russian troops on the ground who saw Prigozhin as a folk hero, saw his troops as their point of the spear… Now they’re left to fight on alone. They were already demoralized. They’ve got some severe losses ahead.”

Another factor is that Russia had to deploy forces to seek to retake the southern command headquarters captured by Prigozhin. It turned to Putin ally and commander of the Chechen forces, Ramzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov, who is about as nasty and as feared a colonel general as they come. Pulling Kadyrov away to deal with Wagner was not in the Russian defensive plans, that's pretty certain.

Mark Hertling, the former Commanding General of the U.S. Army in Europe, further raised the possibility that Putin must now consider two possible places his forces need to be, in effect having to divide his attention and resources. “I think we’re beginning to see more and more exponentially strong pressures against Putin, and I think he’s cracking,” Hertling remarked. “One thing I’ve thought about is whether this would cause him to consolidate and pull back under the threat of an implosion?”

The reversal of fortune was noted by no less than U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Think about it this way: 16 months ago, Russian forces were on the doorstep of Kyiv in Ukraine, believing they would take the capital in a matter of days and erase the country from the map as an independent country. Now, what we’ve seen is Russia having to defend Moscow, its capital, against mercenaries of [Putin’s] own making,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “Certainly, we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead.”