Because I have reported from Russia, people sometimes ask me, “What do you think might bring Putin down?” This is one I hadn’t thought of.
A mercenary army, infamous for its brutality and led by a wicked man once close to the Russian dictator, now is in a battle with Putin and threatening his rule. The chief of the paramilitary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been badmouthing Moscow’s military leaders for months, complaining publicly that his private fighting forces helping the Russian assault on Ukraine were not getting the support— weapons, ammunition, air cover— that they were supposed to get from the Kremlin. What appears to have tipped the scales in just the past 24 hours are Prigozhin’s claim that the Russian military actually assaulted his troops, killing “a huge amount” of them. “We were attacked,” he says, “by artillery and then by helicopters.”
I never thought I’d be rooting for Prigozhin and his Wagner Group. They are a vicious band of mercenaries. They do the dirty work for dictators in the Middle East and Africa, and of course have been a merciless force in the war against Ukraine. But if this thing they’ve started mushrooms, you’ll hear me cheering. Not just because it might put Putin on the edge of a cliff, but because by pitting one Russian army against another, it might give Ukraine a gift beyond its wildest dreams.
Latest reports say that Wagner, which advertises itself as a "sabotage and assault reconnaissance group,” yesterday crossed the border from Ukraine, where they’d been fighting, into their own motherland, Russia, and took control with a column of tanks of a southern city 600 miles south of Moscow called Rostov-on-Don, which is the headquarters for the Russian army’s war against Ukraine. Reports say that Wagner could fortify its forces for further fighting by capturing Russian weapons that are stockpiled in the city.
And, according to the latest assessments, Prigozhin and Wagner didn’t stop there. In a video he released this morning, the Wagner chief said, “We are blockading the city of Rostov and going to Moscow.” Apparently the Kremlin has had to dispatch military equipment to the highway that connects the two, and local authorities have told civilians to stay away. New pictures show that a column of Wagner vehicles now has made its way to a town called Elets, more than halfway to the Russian capital.
The New York Times says it can verify videos that show active fighting along the road, “including helicopters and a destroyed truck.”
Meantime, reports are that Moscow now has sent Chechen troops, known for savage combat, to push Wagner’s army out of Rostov-on-Don.
And the war has even come to Moscow. Photos show Russian soldiers, with automatic weapons and body armor, taking up positions at the southern entrances to the city. A “counterterrorist operation regime,” which is double-talk for martial law, has been declared in the capital.
Early this morning, President Putin went on television for five minutes, admitting that the situation was “difficult” but vowing that he would take “decisive action” against those on a “path of treason,” and that Wagner would be crushed. “Those who organized and prepared the armed rebellion, those who raised weapons against comrades in arms, betrayed Russia,” he said, “and they will answer for this.”
But he can’t be sure because even for Putin, this is uncharted territory. His authority isn’t being challenged by a man with a political following like Alexei Navalny, who Putin has imprisoned along with some of his closest supporters. It’s being challenged by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a man with an army.
It would be folly to predict the outcome. I’ve covered enough wars to know that at this point, many reports about who’s losing and who’s winning probably aren’t reliable. What’s more, it all might be changing as I write this. But for Putin, who has ruled Russia for a quarter of a century, the stakes have never been higher. Even if he does crush Prigozhin and erase the threat from Wagner, his territory has been at least temporarily conquered, his military has been diverted, his capital might be besieged, his dominance might be diminished. No Russian ruler has been challenged like this since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
The world would be better off without Vladimir Putin or Yevgeny Prigozhin. As Substack blogger Heather Cox Richardson wrote this morning, “There are no good guys in this struggle.” But there could be a good outcome. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry sent out a tweet last night that summarized in three short words the gift that Ukraine’s enemies have handed them: “We are watching.”
Putin is weakened. Russia is weakened. And Ukraine didn’t have to lift a finger.
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.
I hope they fight it out on Russian soil where the both belong and destroy each other.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," at least until this episode of the conflict is over.