2023-06-26 21:08:00
The Wagner Group mercenary rebellion has exposed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s weaknesses and raised questions about growing threats to his political survival, analysts say.
Putin immediately sensed the danger this weekend and managed to get Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to halt his troops’ advance and accept a deal to go into exile in Belarus.
Several observers point out that it is too early to determine what the fallout from the mutiny will be for Putin, 70, who has ruled Russia for nearly two and a half decades since the 1999 resignation of Boris Yeltsin, the first president after the breakup of the Union. Soviet.
At a time when Russia maintains an invasion of Ukraine, the rebellion has shaken Putin’s image as a strong, all-powerful man and shown a frail politician struggling to control warring factions.
“Putin and the state have suffered a hard blow, which will have important repercussions for the regime,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the consultancy R. Politik.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said over the weekend that the rebellion had exposed “true fissures”.
– ‘The beginning of a process’ –
The complicated infighting that the revolt reveals, including the personal dispute between Prigozhin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, demonstrate that Putin is no longer comfortably positioned in a vertical system of power.
Furthermore, the armed forces were unable to prevent Wagner fighters from taking over the Russian army command center in Rostov.
A surprising twist is that negotiations for Prigozhin to drop his rebellion were brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, who is often seen as Putin’s vassal and ultimately emerged as his savior.
The uprising was brought under control within hours, but images of Prigozhin and his fighters treated like heroes in Rostov put the Kremlin in an uncomfortable position.
All these doubts are crucial less than a year before the presidential elections in Russia, in 2024, which, after the reforms of the Constitution, would allow Putin to remain in power for two terms, hypothetically until 2036.
Putin has not formally confirmed his intentions and there are no indications that any rival will enter the race, although the governor of the province (oblast) of Tula, Alexei Dyumin, who was a bodyguard of the Russian president, is profiled as a possible successor to Shoigu and candidate for ascension.
For Kirill Rogov, director of consultancy Re: Russia, “this is not the end of the story, it is the beginning. Military rebellions, including those that fail, are often the prelude in history, the beginning of a process”.
In his speech on Saturday, Putin described the rebellion as “a stab in the back” and compared it to the situation in 1917 when the first events of the Russian Revolution deposed the tsar and the country abandoned the conflict during World War I.
For Mark Galeotti, director of the Mayak Intelligence think tank, “none of this implies that the regime will collapse soon”, but pointed out that the rebellion “weakens the state’s capacity, strength and credibility and brings the day when this regime fall”.
– ‘Putin also lost’ –
The invasion launched against Ukraine prompted close scrutiny by Russian-speaking media abroad of Putin’s health, lifestyle and decision-making process, on many occasions projecting the image of a sick, paranoid, increasingly more isolated and who spends little time in the Kremlin.
Several outlets have indicated that Putin spends most of his time at Lake Lagoda outside St. Petersburg, where he travels by armored train rather than by plane, to make sure he is safe.
The Kremlin has insisted that Putin remained in Moscow over the weekend and has consistently denied claims that cast doubt on his health.
“My conclusion is that Prigozhin and the [Grupo] Wagner lost,” said Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA).
“But Putin also lost and the regime is hurt. It remains to be seen what the long-term consequences will be,” he stressed.
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