Criminal Adventures

If you’re going to stage a military coup, you generally need military buy-in. Ideally, you are the military in a military coup, or at least a faction of the military.

A military coup not perpetrated by the military — or by political entrepreneurs aligned with rebellious elements inside the military — isn’t a military coup. It’s just a civil war. And not one you’re especially likely to win, particularly not in modernity, because the military has a monopoly on modern weapons like warplanes and cruise missiles.

None of that’s lost on Yevgeniy Prigozhin, nor was it lost on an officer in a Ukrainian artillery unit who, amid bizarre headlines out of Russia, told The Washington Post he was “very skeptical” of the idea that Prigozhin and his notorious band of ragtag mercenaries were serious about what Russia’s Defense Ministry on Saturday called a “criminal adventure.” “It could be a political move — some kind of staging,” the Ukrainian fighter said.

If Prigozhin’s cartoonishly brazen actions were a ruse, it was an elaborate ploy. Complete with a nationally televised address from Vladimir Putin who, without naming Prigozhin, described The Wagner Group’s apparent occupation of Russia’s Southern Military District command center as “a stab in the back of our country and our people.” Putin promised to “stabilize the situation” in Rostov-on-Don, where Prigozhin, speaking from inside the military headquarters, again accused the Defense Ministry of lying to the Russian public about battlefield realities in Ukraine. “A huge amount of territory has been lost,” he said. “The number of soldiers killed is three to four times more than it is documented.”

Tensions between Prigozhin and the Defense Ministry are nothing new, nor is the idea that the family feud is part ploy. In early May, Prigozhin became a trending topic across Western social media when, in a characteristically bombastic video address, he threatened to pull his troops out of the fight for Bakhmut, citing an ammo shortage he blamed on Russia’s top military brass. The timing of the threat — on Victory Day in Russia, just minutes after Putin’s commemorative address — was an affront to the Kremlin, and the language Prigozhin employed while delivering the message was egregiously caustic.

Less than two weeks later, Prigozhin claimed control of Bakhmut for Putin, though, only to leave the city almost immediately. This month, he started taking hostages. Russian hostages. It was actually just one hostage, an officer who, under duress, admitted to firing on Wagner units. If you believe Prigozhin’s story, the last straw was a new Russian military strike on Wagner positions, which he claimed were “assaulted from the rear.” (I know. I know.) Prigozhin cited that alleged escalation in calling on Russians (all Russians) to join 25,000 of his men in an uprising against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the focal point of Prigozhin’s frequent ire. If this was a real rebellion, Prigozhin’s aim was almost surely to force an overhaul at the Defense Ministry, starting with Shoigu’s ouster.

The ministry routinely denies Prigozhin’s claims of endemic ineptitude, and like Putin, generally avoids naming him. According to leaked US intelligence, the Kremlin struggled this year to develop a coherent strategy for countering Prigozhin’s increasingly shrill rhetoric. That rhetoric turned into action on Saturday, when he led Wagner units across the border into Rostov-on-Don. Wagner apparently encountered little, if any, resistance while crossing. Prigozhin claimed some Russian soldiers and conscripts were happy to see him. He later told a pair of senior Russian military commanders that he shot down three helicopters after they fired on Wagner units. “We’ll bring them all down if you keep sending them,” he said, in a video posted to social media.

Columns of Wagner military vehicles were seen barreling north, up a highway near Voronezh, presumably on their way to Moscow, which the Kremlin hastily fortified, albeit not in a way that suggested Putin expected an actual fire fight for control of the capital. Later, Prigozhin turned around. “In 24 hours we got to within 200 km of Moscow,” he said, late Saturday. “Now is the moment when blood could be shed. Therefore, taking full responsibility for the fact that Russian blood could be spilled, we are turning our columns around and returning to our field camps.”

To state the obvious, Wagner can’t win a war with the Russian military. Prigozhin is hopelessly outgunned, and he only has 25,000 men. The prospect of an outright fight for control of the Kremlin is too laughable to take seriously, so assuming this was all real in the first place, Prigozhin must’ve had some other plan in mind that didn’t involve a fight.

It was possible, I guess, that he believed he could win over Shoigu’s subordinates. It was also possible that Western intelligence agencies were involved and that, together, they suspected a push from Prigozhin could be a tipping point for a military frustrated by a war that plainly isn’t going well. Or maybe even a tipping point for everyday Russians.

Putin called the developments “a deadly threat” to Russian statehood and “a blow to the Russian people.” He pledged “tough” actions and said anyone “who deliberately embarked on the path of betrayal… will suffer inevitable punishment both before the law and before our people.” He didn’t obfuscate, or try to downplay the situation, which was a bit odd. He called Saturday a “military rebellion,” and said some Wagner personnel “raised arms against their comrades-in-arms and betrayed Russia.” Prigozhin said Putin was “deeply mistaken regarding the betrayal of the motherland.” “We’re saving Russia,” he said, during the meeting with Russian defense commanders in Rostov-on-Don.

Officially, there was a warrant out for Prigozhin’s arrest. The fact that it wasn’t executed at any point Saturday spoke to something, but it wasn’t entirely clear what. The very fact that Prigozhin lived to turn his troops around was a testament to more than just Wagner’s effectiveness on the battlefield in Ukraine and the group’s years of service as Putin’s private, extraterritorial army.

The Defense Ministry has presumably had every opportunity to assassinate Prigozhin in Ukraine and blame it on Kyiv or errant shelling or a falling piano. He spent Saturday parading around Russia with armored vehicles, commandeering critical military command posts and making all kinds of televised threats while brandishing an assault rifle. If that were anyone else, he’d be tied up in a dungeon somewhere with Putin’s (frail, old) hands around his throat.

If this wasn’t a charade, about the best anyone can do is throw up their own hands and hope for the “best,” whatever the “best” means to you in this context. I have my doubts, but it seemed real enough by Saturday evening in Russia, when Prigozhin finally (and perhaps temporarily) backed down. Ramzan Kadyrov lambasted Prigozhin and pledged fealty to Putin, the Kremlin said Recep Tayyip Erdogan (coup-survivor extraordinaire) reached out to offer his “full support” and Putin was on the phone with Alexander Lukashenko, who reportedly convinced Prigozhin to stop short of Moscow.

Prigozhin indicated he didn’t plan to surrender. “We are all ready to die,” he declared. That’s his prerogative, but the rest of us aren’t. Ready to die, I mean. There’d be a lot of nukes up for grabs in a failed Russian state. Frankly, the country would have to be occupied by an international coalition if it devolved into chaos. In that sense, I suppose we should hope the whole thing was Putin playing 3D domestic chess.

The Ukrainian soldier who spoke to Western media on Saturday summed it up. “Time will tell what it will grow into,” he said.

Under the deal brokered by Lukashenko, Prigozhin will flee to Belarus and his troops will be given the option to sign contracts with the Russian military. Those who don’t won’t be prosecuted for Saturday’s events in consideration of their “heroism” in Ukraine. Charges against Prigozhin were dropped.