Some initial thoughts on the Russian crisis
Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori
July 2, 2023
The crisis that erupted last Saturday in Russia with the mutiny of the Wagner militia and its “march on Moscow” is the first internal backlash to the war of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Beyond its outcome, it is also a litmus test of the fault lines running through the Putin regime and its military apparatus.
Prigozhin’s retreat, and especially the terms of Lukashenko’s so-called mediation, seem a radical defeat of the mutineers, a kind of surrender. But Putin and his public image also emerge damaged from the uprising. For the first time, the profile of the invincible commander-in-chief, who controls and arranges everything, has been challenged. Will Putin now be able to turn the defeat of the uprising into a lever to revive his own tarnished prestige?
Under Prigozhin’s leadership and with Putin’s protection, the Wagner militia had become a major power center within the Russian state. A military, media, business power center. Its growth accompanied the development of Russian imperialism and its power politics. First in Syria, then in Libya, then again in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Everywhere, the militia offers military protection on Moscow’s behalf in exchange for mining concessions, particularly in gold and diamonds ($60 million in annual profits). The task of replacing French imperialism by Russian imperialism in the heart of Africa has been contracted out by Putin to Wagner.
But above all, the invasion of Ukraine has pushed Wagner’s military role to the forefront. Lavishly supported with $86 billion by the Russian state, according to the figure now revealed by Putin himself, Wagner put to use in Ukraine the military experience it had accumulated in Syria and its military assets of heavy equipment and men. The Putin regime allowed Wagner privileged terms of enlistment, starting with mass recruitment of prisoners in exchange for pardons.
A criminal army, in every respect, led by avowedly Nazi adventurers. The execution by hammer of military personnel suspected of surrender — complete with video — gives an indication of the company’s internal rules. The Battle of Bakhmut was Wagner’s crowning achievement, the symbol of its military capability and power. The slaughter of 20,000 soldiers was the price of this success, in the name of the Russian homeland.
But over time, Wagner’s growth became a problem for the internal balances of the Russian state.
From January 23, Prigozhin began publicly opposing Defense Minister Shoigu and the new Chief of Staff Gerasimov, accusing them of incapacity, cowardice, corruption, and insensitivity to the conditions of the troops at the front. A ruthless campaign conducted not only on internal lines, but also through Telegram channels and the Patriot media group, both of which are Wagner’s own. The campaign never called President Putin into question; indeed, each time paid homage to him as “our president.” It just tried to push Putin to break with Shoigu and Gerasimov by replacing them with other Wagner-linked men, first and foremost among them General Surovikin, formerly known as the “Butcher of Aleppo.” Unsurprisingly, Surovikin had been the Chief of Staff until January, when he was replaced by Gerasimov. Prigozhin wanted to push Putin to restore the previous line of command.
For six months, Wagner bombarded the Russian Army headquarters daily with his own propaganda. For six months, Putin was silent about the controversy, trying to keep himself above the internal contradictions of his own military apparatus to dominate them. The classic role of a Bonaparte. But, beyond a certain threshold, the balancing act proved impossible.
Starting in May, Shoigu’s Defense Ministry, with Putin’s approval, launched an operation to rationalize the military apparatus and unify command. The operation encompassed the role of private militias, which are very numerous in Russia, responding to various oligarchic interests, as in the case of the Gazprom militia, among others. The Defense Ministry required each private militia to contract its relationship with the state as a necessary condition for operating on the war front. In effect, a proposal to integrate and subordinate the militias within the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation under the command of Defense.
The Wagner militia felt threatened and rejected the proposal. Prigozhin’s uprising was a last-ditch attempt to evade it, a last reckless attempt to press Putin to order a change of scenario. Not a coup to overthrow Putin, but an initiative aimed at breaking his alliance with Shoigu, the culmination of his policy of pressuring the Russian president in order to safeguard his own role. But the operation failed. The first hours of the mutiny seemed encouraging: the peaceful conquest of Rostov, a rapid advance toward Moscow without significant resistance. In fact, in those same hours all the premises of a possible success fell apart.
First, confronted with the military mutiny, Putin eventually had to take a position himself, with a public statement denouncing the mutineers as “traitors who stabbed the Russian people in the back” in wartime. “Just as Lenin had done in 1917,” said Putin, with an obviously grotesque juxtaposition of Lenin and Prigozhin, confirming once again Putin’s anti-communist obsession. Hence the public announcement of the exemplary punishment of those responsible, and the call for the unity of the Russian people.
Second, General Surovikin, Prigozhin’s favorite and on whom Prigozhin was banking, publicly appealed to Wagner not to shed Russian blood and to choose to withdraw. Not only that. To evidence his own positioning against the Wagner militia rebellion, Surovikin sent planes and helicopters, under his own command, to counter the advance. The only military action taken against the Wagner advance (at the cost of 16 dead pilots) was paradoxically led by Prigozhin’s only “friendly” general. Surovikin’s defection gave the Wagner adventure the coup de grâce.
The declaration of retreat after the approach 200 kilometers from Moscow was at that point obligatory. Lukashenko, on Putin’s behalf, took charge of the decisive mediation. But surrender it is. Prigozhin currently (perhaps) saves his skin through exile in Belarus. Otherwise, Wagner appears dismembered, deprived of old state economic support, and in any case excluded from military operations in Ukraine. Suravikin has disappeared, probably under interrogation for his ambiguous dealings with Wagner. The hated Shoigu and Gerasimov remain in place, while the intelligence services (FSB) launch a hunt for Wagner’s real or alleged accomplices in the underbrush of the state apparatus. It is hard to imagine a more catastrophic outcome for Prigozhin’s adventure.
But if Prigozhin cries, Putin does not laugh. The president remains in the saddle, he seeks crowds to demonstrate his popularity, he will try to capitalize on the defeat of the riot with the propaganda revival of his own regime. And yet his image comes out damaged by the affair. Too many things do not add up.
At 9 a.m. on Saturday morning, the president launched the public reprimand of the mutiny, but for the entire day the army did not move. Some military units even declared sympathy for the mutineers (the 205th Cossack motorized rifle brigade, the 22nd Spetznaz brigade, and several units of the so-called “Storm Z”). The only general to militarily counter Wagner’s advance was from outside the central chain of command, Surovikin, who was solely concerned not to jeopardize his own future. On the other hand, responding to Putin’s call, albeit belatedly, was the Islamo-fascist Kadyrov and his militia, ready to become the president’s bodyguard (in exchange for terrorist control over Chechnya).
For the entire day, resistance to Prigozhin thus consisted of a few streets torn up to slow his advance, and sandbags and machine guns in Moscow as a last defense of the capital — the image of a power entrenched and under siege, confronted with all its fragility. Not exactly the most suitable choreography for a president who makes the display of his strength the main lever of his prestige.
The Putin regime pays for the privatization of the state apparatus, the contracting out of military facilities, and the weakness of a direct force to leverage. The only presidential military force is the Russian National Guard, a kind of carabinieri weapon. But it has 10,000 men, and no heavy weapons to date. The fact that Putin now announces the heavy armament of the National Guard, and thus its reinforcement, reveals an awareness of difficulties on the home front, which may be exposed to new tests in the future.
The Russian population did not move, either for Prigozhin or for Putin. Not for Prigozhin, if one excludes the image of Rostov, in which, however, the celebration around Wagner was also satisfaction at its peaceful surrender and departure. But not for Putin either, despite the president’s network appeal for unity. The majority consensus around the president remains, but it is a passive one, perhaps more doubtful today than yesterday.
The Ukraine war had been presented by Putin as a revival of Russian glory against Nazi Ukraine and the collective West, against the Enemy. But now suddenly it is the home front that is cracking. It is the so-called “heroes of Bakhmut” who have denounced the corruption and incompetence of the command.
And ricocheting back is Prigozhin’s sensational admission, in the hour of his own marginalization, that what has been said about the war is all lies: about the battle deaths, the victories reported, and even the reasons for the war — not to defend Russia from Ukraine, but to hang new medals on Shoigu’s chest. In simplified form, but doubtlessly true. Now confessed. By a war butcher, but confessed. And all the more significant, precisely because confessed by a war butcher, the most unsuspected of Russian nationalists.
Of course, the Putin regime explains it all by saying that Ukraine and the West must be the instigators … of the Prigozhin mutiny. And some fools in Italy will believe the latest Putin fairy tale, as they did the previous ones. But in Russia, doubt about the credibility of war propaganda has perhaps opened a new small gap in a wider sector of public opinion. Putin will do all he can to close that gap by reviving Great Russian chauvinism. To the vanguard of the Russian workers’ movement goes the task of expanding it:— against Putin, his imperialism, his war.