As Russia weakens, whoever has soldiers and guns will survive

When does a state fail? The short answer is: When it loses its “monopoly of violence.” When warlords, revolutionaries, or drug cartels control all or most of its territory, the state has failed and effectively ceased to exist. We owe this insight to the German sociologist Max Weber, who argued over a century ago that just such a monopoly was a central feature of well-functioning states.

Seen in this light, the Russian Federation seems headed for state failure.

Three private armed forces currently operate in Russia. All receive both public and private funding and are closely identified with leaders with inflated political ambitions. As none of them has a clearly defined legal status, they exist as private armies that potentially could undermine the Russian state’s monopoly of violence.

Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has an army of some 12,000 Chechen fighters. Although technically under the command of Russia’s National Guard, which reports to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the “Kadyrovites” remain under Kadyrov’s control. More than 1,000 were deployed to Russia’s war against Ukraine, where, despite their bluster, they haven’t performed too well.

Putin’s former cook, Yevgeny Prigozhin, runs the so-called Wagner Group, consisting of some 10,000 to 20,000 well-trained and well-armed mercenaries who are leading Russia’s assault on Ukrainian positions in the Donbas. An additional 40,000 former convicts have also joined Wagner in recent months, but they serve primarily as dispensable cannon fodder. Some experts believe that Prigozhin is Putin’s rival; others claim he’s Putin’s toady. Whatever the case, it’s clear that Prigozhin’s primary loyalty is to himself.

Finally, there’s Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu’s “Patriot” private military company. It apparently has been deployed to the Vuhledar area of Donetsk Province, where its relations with Wagner have been described as “competitive.” Importantly, Kadyrov and Prigozhin are critics and rivals of Shoigu, whom they blame for Russia’s disastrous military performance in the war. Shoigu, naturally, sees them as a threat to his authority and bailiwick.

Thus far, none of these formations has challenged the official armed forces or Putin, who needs to keep them on a short leash. And although they may be in competition with one another, their relations have remained non-violent. But the mere fact that such forces exist during a war in which the Russian army is performing poorly raises questions about their potential to challenge the Kremlin and serve as private armies.

If Russia continues to lose on the battlefield, if Putin’s fascist regime continues to lose legitimacy and weaken, if the economy continues to shrink, if popular protest grows as the numbers of Russian casualties approaches 200,000, and if the state’s capacity to maintain law and order declines — all perfectly plausible “ifs” today — then whoever has soldiers and guns will survive and thrive. If Russia descends into chaos, neither Kadyrov nor Prigozhin nor Shoigu will take the fall for Putin. Instead, each will happily stab him in the back and try to become kingmaker or king.

The private armies are both symptoms and accelerators of the Russian state’s weakness, and their number and size are likely to increase as the state grows weaker. If they begin appearing in the Russian Federation’s non-Russian administrative units, then we’ll know that Russia is in serious trouble.

Many Western experts agree with this scenario. In an Atlantic Council survey of 167 experts, including Russia-specialists from the public, private and academic sectors, 47 percent “expect Russia to either become a failed state or break up by 2033. More than a fifth (21 percent) consider Russia the most likely country to become a failed state within the next 10 years, which is more than twice the percentage for the next most common choice, Afghanistan. Even more striking, 40 percent of respondents expect Russia to break up internally by 2033 because of revolution, civil war, political disintegration, or some other reason.”

Obviously, experts can be wrong, as they have been so often in the past. But it’s striking that close to half expect nothing good for Russia, if only as an indication of how much the expert mood has changed because of the war. One year ago, few would have dared to suggest that Russia might be headed for oblivion. The change in opinion is as much of a measure of the enormity of Putin’s blunder in attacking Ukraine as it is a predictor of the future. 

If Russia fails as a state, Russians asking the perennial Russian question of “Who is guilty?” will have to look no further than their own strongman.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”