If you come at the Tsar, you best not miss.
Last week I wrote a post discussing why I don’t think Russian president Vladimir Putin is likely to leave office until the war is over. Conveniently for my thesis if not for Putin, last week there was a serious attempt at changing Russian politics by force. Now that the dust has settled and Yevgeny Prigonzhin’s overnight rebellion has stood down, Putin is in power and Prigozhin in exile. It’s not clear why the rebellion started, or what if any goals it had. What is clear though, is that there is little appetite for getting rid of Putin from Russian elites. All it would have taken for the rebellion to become a full-on civil war was one high-profile defection. Yet the silence from the Russian establishment was deafening.
Most of the Western reporting I’ve read about the rebellion has argued that Prigozhin and his Wagner group mercenaries’ revolt shows the weakness in Putin’s regime. The clear implication being that Putin might not be able to hold on to power if he can’t even control his mercenaries. Consider it from the opposite side for a moment. Over the weekend a (reportedly) popular public figure known for their no-bullshit style, complete with a personally loyal military force of up to 30 000 men, declared open rebellion against Putin’s regime. Yet no report mentions any Russian leader throwing their lot in with Wagner. No one. Not a single local official, mayor, military officer, minister, bureaucrat, business leader, or public figure seems to have taken Prigozhin’s side. According to a New Yorker article, it’s not for lack of Prigozhin supporters. The article quotes Mikhail Zygar, a Russian journalist in exile as speculating that figures like Sergey Chemeznov and Igor Sechin, CEOs of Rosneft and Rostec respectively, support Prigozhin in private. Still, officially Prigozhin is on his own. I find that extraordinary, and a sign that Putin’s regime is perhaps more stable than I previously thought.
Western press have covered Prigozhin’s power play as a revelation of just how weak Putin is, but that’s not news. Putin’s been weak since his withdrawal of Russian forces from Kyiv in April 2022. Putin’s weakness was on full display when his little “special military operation” required 300 000 new recruits in September 2022. Putin has been weak for a long time, but just how weak a leader is is hard to tell when there are no free and fair opinion polls. Inflection points like the one over the weekend are helpful when gauging how things stand, and while Putin doesn’t look especially strong, there is a difference between stability and strenght.
Prigozhin and Putin both live to fight another day. But Putin is 70 years old, and stuck in a ‘May Stalemate’ while Prigozhin is eight years younger and now a wildly famous opposition politician. It’s unclear why Prigozhin started the rebellion, and precisely why he ended it too. What is clear however, is that Yevgeny is the only powerful man in Russia brave enough to try to come at the Tsar. He missed this time, but he is now the leading candidate for taking over when Putin’s mess has been resolved.
If you liked this post you can read my last post about why Putin won't be ousted here, or the rest of my writings here. It'd mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Come back next Monday for a new post!
I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
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Cover photo by Lara Jameson from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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