Some details have come out about the deal that Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko brokered to end the crisis. Yevgeny Prigozhin will be exiled to Belarus and Wagner forces who participated in the mutiny will not be prosecuted but will not be contracted into the Russian military while those who did not participate will be allowed to sign contracts with the Russian military.
While this serious crisis was fortunately ended quickly through negotiation with little bloodshed, it was an embarrassment for the Kremlin. But, at this time, I think that comments from various quarters that this means the Putin government is especially weak are exaggerated.
First of all, no Russian officials or high military commanders went against the Putin government to support Progozhin’s escapade. As other analysts have pointed out, Turkey’s Erdogan faced a coup attempt in 2016 that involved some of his military leaders and Erdogan is still going pretty strong. This event didn’t even rise to that level.
Time will tell what kind of substantive damage this has done to the Putin government. I’m open to changing my opinion based on how things unfold.
Of course, many in the western chattering classes, true to form, didn’t waste any time in putting out bad takes while the crisis was ongoing, breathlessly hoping for the Putin government to be overthrown or at the very least for a civil war to erupt. Some of these folks were suddenly rooting for a guy they’d condemned five minutes before as a war criminal. This just goes to show – if you needed anymore evidence – that for these people it doesn’t have to make sense. Anything they perceive to be bad for Putin and/or Russia is cause for celebration and the long-term consequences of major instability in a nuclear-armed country aren’t to be seriously considered unless you want to be seen as a party-pooper fascist.
These same people, after they recover from their profound disappointment that there’s no civil war in Russia and Putin isn’t hanging from a lamp post, will go back to having their garbage posted at The Atlantic or The New Yorker as if they just got drunk one night and showed their rear end at a party and everyone tacitly agrees not to bring it up. After all, the educated professional class doesn’t like to be too judge-y about personal and professional foibles.
This whole fiasco with Wagner has brought to mind a point that Putin made several years back to the west at the UN. He scolded the west (rightly) for using terrorists to achieve their geopolitical goals against opponents and how it leads to unintended consequences because such forces cannot be controlled. Similarly, Putin used a loose cannon (Progozhin) to conduct certain operations with the short-term benefit of fewer casualties for the Russian army and it blew up in his face. Because he was a loose cannon, Prigozhin got full of himself, went off-leash and became a chaos agent. Putin should have known better.
At this moment the headline on CNN’s website reads: “Putin appears to be at his weakest in decades.” So, as you rightfully noted, the political class and their loyal regurgitates in the mainstream media will now be relentless in pushing the “Putin is on the way out” narrative. This will only embolden the neocon cabal of Blinken/Sullivan/Nuland/Austin/Biden to continue doubling down and sending yet more weapons to Ukraine, as they believe their goal of regime change is now in sight. The turmoil in Russia has them salivating, and they are ready to continue the proxy war against Russia, no matter the risks, until the last Ukrainian. Clearly, they have no intention of backing off from their game of nuclear chicken, and so the danger of the war turning nuclear continues to grow. For the neocon cabal, who are determined to bring about regime change and break up the Russian Federation, diplomacy is a 4-letter word.
Putins popularity in Russia will grow even further and this will quickly blow over there imho;for me this will hasten a Russian offensive.
Wagner is gone in the region and its best parts will be absorbed into the Russian military.There is no danger at all of a coup or civil war and never was;i think we are all used to the hysteria of the Western media. NATO weapons stocks are virtually exhausted.
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Actually, I think Putins authoruity emerges stronger from this. He immediately denounced the ‘coup’ and Prigozhin and nobody followed Prigozhin – apart from ‘Western inteligence’ and the pro-Ukraine lobby who know their only hope of survival is the collapse of Russia or western intervention. It looks like the reason for Prigozhin’s behaviour was that the state was trying to haul him in and force Wagner to sign official contracts and he didn’t want to be under the control of the people he has been so publicly criticising. Can you imagine what would happen in the UK and USA if anyone did what Prigozhin did?