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Prigozhin presumed dead
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Yevgeny Prigozhin, former head of Wagner Group and would-be putschist against Vladimir Putin's Kremlin and Russia, is no more. It was an unprecedented story, that coup attempt against Putin's regime. This was the man who, of course, had been built up and so loyal to Vladimir Putin with the most powerful paramilitary organization in the world, fighting a battle on the ground in Ukraine and fighting against the Minister of Defense and others, losing that battle and deciding to turn his forces against the Russian regime. First, in Rostov and capturing the seat of the Southern command, and then marching him probably on to Moscow, where at the final moment he backs down and agrees to a quote unquote deal with Putin. Putin, who went on national media and referred to Prigozhin as a traitor.
Let's be clear, the important information from all of this was not that there was a deal that was cut. The important information that NATO is paying very close attention to is that Putin didn't take Prigozhin out immediately. He contained the threat. He took his time and acted in a much more calculated way for Putin's own survival.
And given that we've never seen Putin tested like this, and given that for a dictator, it's important to have some air of unpredictability, that you might just launch those weapons, you might have your finger on the button, and that creates some deterrence. The fact is that when Putin was faced with a truly regime-ending threat, that what he did was very careful, very calculated, and ensured the best possible ability for Putin to keep on keeping on.
Now, as I said, back in June, Prigozhin was a dead man walking. Putin had good reason not to want to take him out at the point of his maximum leverage, not least because it would be very ugly in and around Moscow. It would lead to a lot of people getting killed that you wouldn't be able to contain or not show the Russian public. It quite probably would've showed that Putin himself had fled to St. Petersburg from Moscow, a message that certainly he didn't want to see go out.
And of course, Russia was also fighting what was at that point expected to be a very difficult and dangerous Ukrainian counteroffensive. And opening up a fight on two fronts and taking troops away from Ukraine also would've made that much harder for him. So now, Wagner has been contained. Their media company has been shut, many of their bank accounts were frozen, their contracts are being transferred, and the Ukrainian counteroffensive has mostly been shut down by the Russians.
And that of course makes it far, far safer and easier for Putin to go after the former Wagner chief. And so now Yevgeny Prigozhin and the military command structure of Wagner, that leadership dead in a plane crash. I'm fairly comfortable, even though there is no direct evidence at this point, we probably will never have any, saying that Putin gave that order personally. And hey, he actually had some time on his hands since he can't exactly travel to the BRICS Summit in South Africa.
And I'm also comfortable saying that there's no strong near-term threat to Putin. Let's remember that even when the Wagner forces were on their way to Moscow, that there were no defections from Russia's official military structure, no defections from oligarchs. And of course there was not major instability among the Russian people on the streets.
Yes, of course the Russian economy is doing a lot worse now than it was six months ago, a year ago. But Putin still runs that place, and as everyone in Russia can now clearly see, there remain very serious consequences for taking him on.
That's it for me, and I'll talk to y'all real soon.
Don't count Yevgeny Prigozhin out
In late June, the oligarch, longtime Putin ally, and Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin shocked the world (and Vladimir Putin) when he marched his troops through Russia in what appeared to be a coup against Moscow. Although he backed down, Marie Yovanovitch, former US Ambassador to Ukraine, thinks the story is far from over.
"There are probably a number of different phases of the Prigozhin rebellion," Yovanovitch tells Ian Bremmer in the latest episode of GZERO World, "and we're not at the end of it yet."
So why hasn't Putin more brutally punished Prigozhin and his followers for insubordination? And how should the West take advantage of this internal strife within Russia?
Watch this episode: Ukraine's counteroffensive on the brink
And watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld and on US public television. Check local listings.
Wagner fighters near the headquarters of the Southern Military District in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia.
Is the Russian rebellion over … or?
There really are no surprises like Russia surprises.
For about 24 hours, it looked like Russian President Vladimir Putin was facing the biggest political challenge of his life. His old friend Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the powerful Wagner mercenary militia, was leading a column of men toward Moscow in what Putin called an “armed rebellion.” The Kremlin charged him with “mutiny.” Moscow was placed on high-security alert. Putin jetted to St. Petersburg.
And then, just as suddenly as it started, it ended. After easily taking control of two key southern Russian cities – one of them being Rostov-on-don, a major command center for Putin’s war in Ukraine – Prigozhin called the whole thing off after receiving a phone call from Putin-pal Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus.
To “avoid bloodshed,” Prigozhin said, he was ready to turn around and take his men back to their day job: the war in Ukraine. What was the deal that Prigozhin reached with Putin?
First, some background, briefly: Prigozhin, an ex-convict who once worked as Putin’s caterer, runs Wagner Group, a powerful mercenary outfit of as many as 50,000 men that work on Putin’s behalf in several countries in Africa, as well as Syria and, of course, Ukraine. Prigozhin also runs the famous troll farms that tried to meddle in the 2016 US election.
In recent months, he has publicly feuded with the Russian Defense Ministry over strategy and supplies in Ukraine. In Prigozhin's view, Defense Minister Shoigu and other top brass have undermined the war effort through incompetence and corruption. Putin tolerated the sniping at first, but it grew nastier, he tried to put a stop to it by proposing that Wagner be subordinated to the Defense Ministry. Prigozhin wasn’t having it. He claimed, without credible evidence, that Russian troops had attacked his men on Friday, and he immediately launched an armed “justice march” to Moscow, aiming to “stop the evil” of the Defense Ministry. The Wagnerites made it to within 125 miles of the Kremlin before stopping.
The deal. Under the agreement brokered by Lukashenko, the Kremlin has dropped all “mutiny” charges against Prigozhin, who will now go into exile in Belarus. The Wagner fighters who participated in the rebellion will be pardoned, while the rest will be permitted to become contract fighters for the Russian army. A surprisingly peaceful end to the most brazen challenge that Putin has experienced in his two decades of power.
In the end, Prigozhin appears to have judged that he didn’t have enough support in Moscow to go further, while Putin seems to have calculated that a negotiated solution was better than an armed response.
Will this be the end of it? It’s hard to say. Prigozhin’s men have reportedly begun to leave Rostov, but whether he goes quietly into the Belarusian night remains to be seen -- Putin is not known to bury the hatchet with people he considers "traitors" (insert your tea and open-windows jokes here.)
The immediate effect on the war in Ukraine will likely be limited, as the Wagner gang had recently been rotated away from the front lines after taking heavy casualties in the Pyrrhic conquest of Bakhmut. But down the road the Defense Ministry may need to find warm bodies to replace the thousands of demobilized Wagnerites, particularly if Kyiv is able to start making headway in its counteroffensive. It’s also worth considering the ways that dissolving or downsizing Wagner may affect Russia’s interests in Africa and Syria as well.
The biggest questions, however, are in the Kremlin.
No matter how you slice it, the Tsar has taken a hit here. One of his own men, and a reasonably well-known figure in Russia, led an “armed rebellion” that practically cakewalked to the capital. Putin was clearly reluctant to use force to quash the threat on the spot – perhaps he was wary of turning a populist ultranationalist like Prigozhin into a martyr, or else he feared the optics of pitched battles in Rostov – and he had to call in Alexander Lukashenko to sort it out. It’s hard to see how any of that leaves Putin looking stronger, more competent, or more secure than he did on Thursday evening.
After all, for nearly a quarter of a century he has maintained power by playing rival groups off of each other, and eliminating any viable rivals. In this instance, the strategy seems like it nearly backfired. Both his critics and his supporters will take note.