All the questions the past few days have been about Russia. When the mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin went on the rampage, was Vladimir Putin truly threatened? Is Russia’s instability unmasked? Will Putin survive? And what about Prigozhin himself: why did he turn back, where is he now, will he even live to see another day?
Good questions all— and each without an answer, at least not yet— but a question with equal import is, where does this leave Ukraine?
The Ukrainians aren’t saying so but they must be devastated by the quick collapse of Prigozhin’s prospective coup. There could be nothing more mouthwatering than to see two bloodthirsty warlords whose armies have ruthlessly attacked you suddenly turning on each other. At the very least, both would be distracted from the war against Ukraine. At the very most, their war effort would be gravely crippled. The longer the friction, the better for Ukraine.
But although whatever Prigozhin was up to this weekend fell apart almost as fast as it started, it did leave plausibly positive possibilities in its wake. First and foremost, what happens to the mercenary army employed by Prigozhin’s Wagner Group, which has been ruthless in its attacks?
The Kremlin says that aside from the rebel troops who were moving toward Moscow— who reportedly numbered around 25,000— the rest will be absorbed by the Russian Army, which is what Prigozhin bitterly charged, in an audio he released just this morning, was part of Putin’s plan even before the Wagner mercenaries began their short-lived march. What’s positive about that? Two facts, both of them almost inevitable outcomes of the face-off.
First, the fact that the army under Prigozhin’s control has been uniformly more bloodthirsty than Putin’s, if that’s even possible. In January, when an eastern Ukrainian city fell to Russia, a Russian radio reporter texted out this account: “Parts of Wagner stormed the… city of Soledar, which was occupied by the Ukrainian army, and killed all the invaders. Not exchanged, namely killed. Like mad dogs.” As we later saw with Bakhmut, also in the east, the Wagner forces didn’t just level neighborhoods, they leveled whole cities.
Now that bloodthirsty impulse might be blunted.
And second, the fact that Ukraine’s own frontline soldiers have told journalists that Prigozhin’s army was much more competent than Putin’s— better trained, better equipped. If they now fall under the command of Russia’s generals, whose tactics have not quickly crushed Ukraine as they clearly once expected, that has to be seen as a plus, because it’s not Prigozhin’s army anymore, it’s Putin’s, which despite superior manpower and superior force, hasn’t won much more than a stalemate.
Now the attackers might be reduced to their lowest common denominator.
Meanwhile, there are still those questions about what’s going on inside Russia and the biggest is, what will Putin do next?
With his authority so visibly challenged, does he feel the need to step up his attacks on Ukraine? Throughout his short crisis with Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin’s forces continued their drone and missile assaults on Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kiev, as well as artillery and mortar attacks elsewhere. Will he flex his muscles and punish them even worse? Might he use the crisis as an excuse to take the next step, whatever that might be, with the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons?
He is, after all, still in charge, and if we’ve learned nothing else about the Russian despot since the invasion of Ukraine sixteen months ago, we have learned that he will do whatever he feels he needs to do to stay in power and win this war, damn the consequences.
The next question is about his power itself. The head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council speculated yesterday that what happened over the weekend was only “the tip of the iceberg in the destabilization process.” Coming from Kiev, that might be wishful thinking, but it’s not preposterous. On the occasions when I covered the Soviet Union, citizens were fed stories by Soviet media about American presidents literally breathing fire, and because it was the age before cell phones and the internet, people had no place else to go to learn otherwise. Today, even in a repressed society, information gets through. What that means is, when Yevgeny Prigozhin declared in a video interview last Friday that Moscow invaded Ukraine under false pretenses because its claim about Ukrainian and NATO threats against the motherland were a lie, his words had to leak into Russia itself.
It’s not inconceivable that this could inspire further revolts against the leadership of Vladimir Putin.
On the other hand, we haven’t seen that happen and if history is any guide, Putin probably is arresting more dissidents right now and reinforcing his position of power.
So, can Ukraine use what just happened to its advantage? Probably not much.
On the battlefield, reports are that from trenches that protect Russian soldiers who are dug in, to landmines that repel Ukrainian soldiers trying to oust them, the Ukrainian counteroffensive, at least visibly, has not yet met expectations. Still though, in the past few days there are stories about Ukraine reasserting control over towns and villages along the front lines. Ukraine claimed yesterday that around Bakhmut, its forces destroyed major pieces of Russian equipment and killed some 200 Russian soldiers.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister said today, “We are moving forward.” Apparently in some areas they are. But so far, their moves are measured in meters, not miles. At best it will take them months to push the Russians into indefensible positions. And there’s no guarantee that they can.
Which comes back to the confounding weekend of confusion inside Russia itself. There is no guarantee that the upshot of what happened will be a weakened, let alone chastened, Vladimir Putin and in fact it could go altogether in the other direction. But there is no guarantee either, that it won’t.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Dan says you nailed it … and I agree!
Dan says you nailed it … and I agree!