An indifferent response to a warlord’s march on Moscow heralds the dawning realization that Russia has no good way out in Ukraine.
Yevgeny Prigozhin had his reasons for launching a mutiny over the weekend. Russia’s military leadership—including Generals Valery Gerasimov and Sergei Shoigu—had made a bid to subordinate Prigozhin’s mercenary army to their command. The extremely hierarchical, martinet culture of the regular army surely clashed with the efficiency-oriented, entrepreneurial culture of the Wagner paramilitary group, whose motto was “Death is our business, and the business is going well.” But Prigozhin’s message, which he delivered in a 30-minute speech on Friday, was not just about his personal grievances, or even just about the prosecution of the war. It was also political, and full of contradictions.
The mercenary leader accused the military leadership of poor planning, which had led to the betrayal and sacrifice of Russian soldiers, and at the same time, he challenged the very rationale behind the war in Ukraine. He called for a more organized—and more brutal—fight, but also claimed that the entire conflict was the result of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hubris, because Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had been open to negotiations at the start. He assumed a threatening posture toward Ukraine, but spoke respectfully of that country’s military and political leadership. At one point, Prigozhin called the Russian leadership “mentally sick scumbags and wankers” for deciding to “throw yet another several thousand Russian guys into the meat grinder to croak like dogs.” Then, shockingly, he added, “But that can be a legitimate option too. Sometimes, it is reasonable to act like that.”
For all the inconsistencies, Prigozhin’s speech carried an overarching message that was entirely clear: Putin fails to execute his own plans. His system is so inefficient that it cannot win the war it started, and it failed to achieve its goals through diplomacy as well. No matter what the aims are, they should be carried out.
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Prigozhin’s statements can seem chaotic, but they are not improvisations. Rather, the mercenary warlord commands a team of spin doctors and speechwriters that has been running political campaigns in Russia for years. His appeals to various discontented constituencies, from military hawks to anti-war pragmatists, are based on a careful analysis of the tendencies and moods in Russian society. And that analysis yields a singular conclusion: More and more Russians feel that the country has reached a dead end.
In Ukraine, no visible path leads to a Russian victory. Putin keeps inventing stories about how Russia will inevitably prevail: First, it was supposed to win easily by removing the government in Kyiv, then by seizing the Donbas, then by destroying Ukraine’s crucial infrastructure, then by freezing Europeans last winter, then by waiting until the West grew tired of supplying Ukraine with weapons.
