How Wagner’s mutiny left Putin ‘catastrophically weakened’

Russian President Vladimir Putin emerged from the aftermath of an armed rebellion over the weekend with shakier control over his country and growing questions about how long he can maintain power.

Putin avoided a violent clash with Wagner Group in Moscow as the private military company’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, a longtime ally, halted his advance just more than 100 miles from the capital.

Though Putin reportedly struck a deal with Prigozhin to halt the march, the mutiny marked the strongest challenge to Putin’s leadership yet.

“There’s no way Putin is going to recover from this. He will not recover,” said Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). “He has been left like the emperor with no clothes.”

Prigozhin captured a key city in southern Russia with little resistance, saw some Russian soldiers join his vanguard and was welcomed and cheered on by crowds, according to videos shared by Russian Telegram accounts. 

Putin on Monday said those who participated in the rebellion will face “justice.” But the Russian leader is being questioned, even by state-run media channels, for letting the mercenary leader off the hook. 

In a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the Wagner boss will relocate to Belarus and terrorism charges against him will be dropped — though it’s unclear how long either commitment will last. 

Lautman said Putin’s downfall began around October of last year as Ukraine retook territory occupied by Russian forces, and critics allied with Russia, such as Prigozhin, grew bold enough to criticize the Russian military and government.

She noted that the struggle in Ukraine has also seen anti-Kremlin revolutionary groups assaulting towns in Russia, several drone attacks in Moscow and Prigozhin’s increasing challenges to the Kremlin’s authority. 

Lautman added that while the conflict has simmered down, the feud is far from over, describing the deal as a “cooling off period.”

“This is just the beginning of the chaos,” said Lautman, who predicted the relative ease of Prigozhin’s march on Moscow will embolden other revolutionaries in Russia.

Anna Arutunyan, a fellow with the Wilson Center, said Putin is “catastrophically weakened” after the insurrection attempt, especially because the deal to defuse the crisis was made with the help of Belarus.

“Leaving others to sort it out does begin to make him look really vulnerable,” she said. “It’s symptomatic of a weakened leader.”

While some analysts say Putin could recover and stay in power for another decade or longer, Arutunyan predicted it could be the beginning of the end of his leadership. She said the incident was especially troubling for Putin because it showed his inability to control competing elites he has historically played off against each other. 

“Putin relies on businessmen and nonstate actors, thinking he can control them. And then when rivalries come to the surface, he steps back and just thinks that they’ll resolve it on their own,” she said. “They don’t.”

Prigozhin has a long relationship with Putin. Before he founded Wagner Group in 2014, he was a restaurant and catering magnate known as “Putin’s chef” because of his ties to the Kremlin. 

The businessman played a leading role in online efforts to manipulate the 2016 U.S. election and is accused of horrendous human rights abuses for Wagner’s extensive operations in developing countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Prigozhin has remained an influential partner of Putin’s, allowing the Kremlin to gain sway in some countries without direct involvement. But the war in Ukraine, which Wagner joined in spring 2022, changed the relationship dramatically.

The first signs of an incoming revolt emerged months ago, when Prigozhin began publicly slamming Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the commander overseeing the war in Ukraine, for failing to arm his men with enough supplies.

The dispute took a worse turn after Wagner took the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, when Prigozhin accused Russian soldiers of planting explosives on an escape route and of firing on his fighters when they moved to disable them. After Bakhmut, Prigozhin also embarked on what appears to have been a media blitz, accusing Moscow elites of corruption and even hinting at a revolution.

But the Kremlin’s attempt to force Prigozhin to sign a contract that would give Moscow greater control over his company proved to be the decisive push in the confrontation.

Ahead of a July 1 contract deadline, Prigozhin released a video Friday accusing Moscow of lying about the war in Ukraine. He said the war was never intended to protect ethnic Russians, instead saying elites wanted Ukrainian territory for its resources.

Russia’s Federal Security Service quickly opened a criminal case against Prigozhin around the same time, as the mercenary chief claimed Russian forces bombarded a Wagner camp in Ukraine. Moscow denied the strike.

Prigozhin then announced his march into Russian territory, forcing Putin to publicly denounce a “betrayal” in a televised address without naming Prigozhin directly.

As many Putin allies stayed on the sidelines, Lukashenko brokered the deal between Putin and Prigozhin on Saturday, de-escalating the conflict with Wagner forces just 120 miles from Moscow.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the event was “extraordinary,” noting that in February 2022, Putin was attempting to overthrow Kyiv — but was now struggling to defend his own capitol.

“What we’ve seen is Russia having to defend Moscow, its capital, against mercenaries of his own making,” Blinken told NBC News on Sunday. “So in and of itself, that’s extraordinary.”

Prigozhin claims that he was not moving to oust Putin but marched toward the Kremlin to protest “injustice” and prove how weak Russia’s security situation was.

Some analysts said the Wagner boss may have sought to overthrow Putin but realized closer to Moscow how deadly the fighting would be.

Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Center, tweeted that Prigozhin’s move was made out of desperation after heavy losses in Bakhmut and the “state machine” turning against him. 

Stanovaya said the Wagner boss wanted to put himself in a negotiation position with Putin, who had largely ignored his feud with the Ministry of Defense. While she said Putin was dealt a “severe blow,” she conceded the Russian leader prevented the worst outcome.

“I want to emphasize that image has always been a secondary concern for Putin,” she wrote. “Setting optics aside, Putin objectively resolved the Wagner and Prigozhin problem by dissolving the former and expelling the latter. The situation would have been far worse if it had culminated in a bloody mess in the outskirts of Moscow.”

Putin has also yet to cede to Prigozhin’s main demands, such as ousting Shoigu and Gerasimov from power. Shoigu appeared in a Russian Defense Ministry video Monday for the first time since the rebellion.

Still, Prigozhin remains powerful as a populist figure and says he still maintains control over most of his Wagner forces. One possible explanation for why Putin chose to make a deal with Prigozhin was over concerns about his influence, said Ivan Fomin, a democracy fellow at CEPA.

“For Putin, it was not acceptable to see this civil war in the streets,” Fomin said. “Maybe he was concerned about the capacity of the National Guard, not because they were not capable, but maybe he was afraid they would side with Prigozhin.”