While Prigozhin’s gambit ended ingloriously, more attention has been drawn to the episode’s meaning for Vladimir Putin.
While Prigozhin’s gambit ended ingloriously after only 36 hours, more attention has been drawn to the episode’s meaning for Russian President Vladimir Putin. After all, during an ill-advised and protracted war with Ukraine in which his regular military has performed abominably, Putin’s government briefly lost control of an important pillar of armed support. Elements of Prigozhin’s forces occupied the regional capital of Rostov, seized an important military command post there, and drove to within 125 miles of Moscow. In the process they are believed to have killed more than a dozen regular army Russian servicemen. After declaring Prigozhin’s actions to be „treason“ and vowing to crush its participants, Putin instead settled the matter in a negotiation outsourced to a foreign leader.
To Putin’s hopeful opponents, these events strongly suggest that his regime is weak, brittle, and beginning to „crack.“ A fuller appreciation, however, reveals the uncomfortable truth: like most rulers who survive coups, Putin will almost certainly emerge more powerful than he was before.
Even describing Prigozhin’s episode as a „coup“ stretches the facts. At no time since he launched his operation last Friday has the disgraced warlord indicated that Putin was ever his target. Instead, he made clear, and confirmed in a public statement from Belarus after it was all over, that his only intent was to demand answers from his personal rivals in Putin’s government, namely Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
Prigozhin, a vulgar Leningrad ex-con, slimy post-Soviet businessman, and relatively minor Putin acolyte, has no discernible ideological objection to how Russia is ruled or ambition to replace either Putin himself or Russia’s current system of government.
