Last weekend’s events in Russia where a paramilitary force seized an air base and then a column of armoured vehicles headed for the capital without the regular army being able or willing to stop it may lead to confusion and in this context it is best to be careful what we wish for. Indeed, according to some Western intelligence sources, General Sergei Surovikin, head of the Russian aerospace forces and former supreme commander of the Russian military in Ukraine, would have had prior knowledge of Prigozhin’s mutiny and has been missing since Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, let\u2019s try to understand what happened and why it happened precisely now. One of the most noticeable features of the war in Ukraine has been Moscow’s growing reliance on private military companies since Putin signed a decree legalizing “volunteer fighters units” in November last year. Among these, the most famous and powerful is precisely the Wagner group of Yevgeny Prigozhin, although there are others such as Patriot<\/em>, created by the Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu, Redut<\/em>, owned by the oligarch Gennady Timchenko, or the Akhmat<\/em> militias of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. However, a few days ago the Ministry of Defence announced that from July 1 it would assume full control over these forces and militias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This initiative intends to return the monopoly of violence to the State in a context of fragmentation and internal struggles between the different circles that make up the power elites. The siloviki<\/em> or \u2018strong men\u2019 who have all the confidence of Putin, the oligarchs and the ultras. In addition, the Kremlin’s desire to avoid a large-scale mobilization because taking control of private forces could allow Putin to postpone the general mobilization a little longer. Unlike Kadyrov, Prigozhin refused to accept the new deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, dividing and confronting the closest collaborators has always been a classic strategy of autocrats. Putin has confronted his Minister of Foreign Affairs Lavrov with Shoigu, and this one with Prigozhin. Nevertheless, this time it has been a complete failure, because a ruler cannot lose the monopoly of violence, of the army, of the security forces and of intelligence. Prigozhin’s rise shows that the Kremlin has lost that monopoly and Wagner’s boss has enough resources to win the narrative and keep fighting. To some extent, Putin has ended up allowing a kind of alternative to take shape and has created his own nemesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for the impact on the conflict in Ukraine, if after Wagner’s coup the Russian army begins to retreat or disintegrate on the ground it could be an unexpected gift for Ukraine. Actually, the first few days of its counter-offensive has revealed its weaknesses and an internal threat to Putin is a scenario that really favours the Ukrainians. However, so far, the interactive maps and specialized reports have not picked up major military movements at the front, and the battlefield has followed the usual warlike tone of the last few weeks. The mutiny did not prevent the Russian army from launching the most intense missile attacks of recent months against Dnipro, while the Ukrainian Army, in full counter-offensive to recover lost territory, made limited progress in two sectors of the front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond the possible repercussions on the war, the mutiny also raise dangerous scenarios regarding the stability of Russia as a sovereign state and, by implication, international geopolitical security. Some, such as Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the Ukrainian intelligence services, have already begun to draw the map<\/a> of the new states that would be created in the event of the disintegration of Russia. Alternatively, by the inevitable decline of a regime, isolated and cornered, stunned by the repercussions of Western sanctions and threatened by internal separatist tendencies encouraged by demographic changes, since of the twenty Russian regions with positive population growth, nineteen have relatively high percentages of non-ethnic Russians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, it would be wrong to assume that the empowerment of minorities or the creation of new independent republics would automatically contribute to creating a Russia more in tune with Western standards. Ethnic minorities do not necessarily tend more to democracy, human rights, good governance and liberalism than the Russian ethnic majority. On the other hand, the main cultural divide is not between ethnic Russians and minorities, but between large urban areas and the rest of the country: industrially depressed regions, rural provinces, and ethnic republics. In the last decade, Russia’s big cities have shown growing signs of civil society’s commitment to political, social and cultural pluralism, but people of rural areas and minorities, on the other hand, tend to be more conservative about cultural customs and supportive to an authoritarian regime. The question now is also to find out the impact of this mutiny on the loyalty of poorly trained and demoralized regular armed forces, on a population so far largely indifferent to the war or on the oligarchs hit by the sanctions applied to Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is clear is that although the insurgents did not force the removal of the Russian president or, for now, any change in the military leadership, Putin is undoubtedly the big loser because he based his power on an image of omnipotence severely damaged by the mutiny. In addition, Putin still needs Wagner, whether with Prigozhin at the head or with another leader, not only on the battlefield, but also to carry out the countless missions that fit in the broad spectrum of dirty war, from big scale disinformation to the plundering of resources in the Sahel. On the other hand, it is likely that from now on the elites will consider whether Putin is the most suitable leader and whether he is qualified to remain at the head of the country. All the same, it is too early to glimpse possible substitutes, both in the country’s presidency and at the top of the military power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For now, the winner of the crisis is the president of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko who assumed the role of mediator in a moment of extreme tension where neither side wanted a military confrontation that would bring Russia to the gates of a civil war. Although in the last few hours it has also become known the role played by Alexei Dyumin, the governor of the Tula region who some point to as the future minister of Defence. It is not the first time that Lukashenko, Putin’s closest ally (to whom he owes his stay in power after the riots that followed the fraudulent elections of 2020, but who also maintains a close relationship of more than twenty years with Prigozhin), acquires negotiating prominence. Let\u2019s remember that he was the one who facilitated the dialogue between Russia and Ukraine, with the support of France and Germany, to try to end the war in Donbass through the Minsk agreements<\/a> that unfortunately did not yield results. Furthermore, Lukashenko’s political future is closely linked to Putin’s survival in power. If Putin falls, he will be next. Deactivating Wagner was therefore crucial. At the same time, however, granting him political asylum could also give him some advantage over Putin, insofar as he has control over someone whom Putin fears and could unsettle him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n