The failed coup by the Wagner Group has exposed the Russian president’s fatal weaknesses.
By John Feffer | June 29, 2023
The former hotdog salesman rose about as high as he could. He became a caterer to the Russian elite and a confidante of the president. He led his country’s premier paramilitary force. He was one of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs. And then he overreached. Yevgeny Prigozhin now says that he had no intention of overthrowing Russian President Vladimir Putin. That’s a surprise.
Here’s a man who made no secret of his disgust for the Russian military leadership and, by extension, the Russian government. Last weekend, he gathered several thousand of his Wagner Group mercenaries, plus a minor army’s worth of heavy-duty equipment, and took effective control of two major Russian cities: Rostov and Voronezh. On his march to Moscow, his forces shot down six helicopters and a plane, but otherwise encountered few obstacles.
Surely, Prigozhin didn’t expect to seize control of the Kremlin with such a relatively small force. According to his telling, he just wanted to force a shake-up in the Russian military, starting with the ouster of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
More likely, he expected that enough members of the political and military elite would side with him against Putin that he could orchestrate a bloodless coup. He had reason to believe that people were on his side. Ordinary residents of Rostov cheered his presence. Russian soldiers at various points on the way to Moscow let the Wagner units pass unhindered. The reports that Sergei Surovikin, a senior Russian general, might have helped plan the coup are probably not accurate, given that Surovikin early on condemned Prigozhin’s moves and ordered air strikes against the approaching column of Wagner troops.
Indeed, as the example of Surovikin demonstrates, the big boys did not abandon Putin, even though Putin himself apparently abandoned Moscow at the first signs of a fight. Without support from the inside and still a good way from Moscow, Prigozhin realized that he and his troops would soon be dangerously exposed. Taking the Kremlin would not be like taking Rostov.
Meanwhile, Putin was negotiating with fellow despot Aleksandr Lukashenko, the leader of neighboring Belarus, to craft a deal. If Prigozhin called off his coup, the Russian government would withdraw criminal charges against him, allow him to decamp to Belarus, and absorb all willing members of the Wagner Group into the Russian army. Prigozhin seized on this opportunity to recast his putsch as a patriotic effort to save Russia from its incompetent military. This, after all, was a theme he’d been pushing for months.
History does not look kindly on the hesitant usurper. For his part, Putin has punished lesser cases of treason with extrajudicial murder, so Prigozhin is probably wondering right now whether this deal is going to endure. But it is Putin who must now be worrying about the future. Uneasy indeed lies the head that wears a crown, especially when there are other potential Macbeths afoot.
Why a Coup and Why Now?
Prigozhin was backed into a corner. Earlier in June, Shoigu announced that all paramilitary formations like the Wagner Group would have to sign direct contracts with the Russian military beginning July 1. That would have put Prigozhin under the thumb of the man he detested most. Even when Putin pushed the new regulation, the head of the Wagner Group continued to push back…
After the truth-shower 