A Quick Word On Prigozhin’s ‘Accidental Coup’

This time last year, geopolitical observers were beginning to question their assumptions about an inevitable Russian socioeconomic calamity.

Against the odds, it looked as though the country might survive the most aggressive sanctions regime ever assembled in the post-War period without suffering a collapse. Vladimir Putin’s Russia, some said, could exist in perpetuity as a pariah state with limited access to hard currency and few allies.

Fast forward 12 months and some sort of collapse once again appears inevitable.

The Western media spent the last 72 hours chasing the Wagner rebellion story like a convoy of personal injury attorneys following an ambulance. That’s understandable. It’s the biggest story on the planet. By contrast, I’ve adopted what I believe to be a more prudent approach, given the sheer amount of ambiguity involved and the high risk of inadvertently amplifying false narratives while attempting to make sense of the nonsensical.

Generally speaking, my original assessment held up well. For all the fanfare and digital ink devoted to Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s “accidental coup,” as Masha Gessen called it, very little in the way of new information has come out of Russia since Saturday.

Some commentators continue to suggest it was all a ploy — that Putin has some master plan. Although I wouldn’t want to write such narratives off entirely, after three days, I do think it’s relatively safe to say this was every bit the fiasco it seemed. Here, in brief, is what likely happened.

Prigozhin believed, rightly or not, that a looming deadline for volunteer fighters to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry was aimed at dismantling Wagner or, perhaps worse in Prigozhin’s mind, subsuming it under the top-down authority of his bête noire, Sergei Shoigu.

Ahead of the deadline, Prigozhin decided to preempt what he viewed as an existential threat by staging a mutiny. Or a “march,” as he called it. A march with heavy weapons and armored vehicles. He wanted Shoigu gone, and he apparently believed he could achieve that without plunging Russia into chaos. He might’ve also believed, or been led to believe, that at least some within the military ranks supported him.

It started out ok, as long as you don’t count the alleged clash with Russian military helicopters. There were discussions, there was tea and a few laughs were exchanged between Prigozhin and Shoigu’s subordinates.

But as Prigozhin made his way to Moscow, Putin flew away, presumably fearing he might be harmed by accident. That put Prigozhin in a very awkward position: There was nobody to talk to in the capital. There would be no audience at the Kremlin. Assuming he made it (and he wouldn’t), he’d either need to sack the place or not. If sack, death. If not, death. Either way, death.

At that point, Prigozhin, Putin and Alexander Lukashenko had to figure a way out. Prigozhin couldn’t take another step towards Moscow, but Putin couldn’t chance forcibly arresting him because if he didn’t surrender, there’d be a firefight. If Wagner prevailed, which they might’ve, Putin would’ve needed to incinerate them with warplanes. Then he’d have to clean the charred remains of his personal mercenary army up off the highway and explain to a stunned Russian populace why everything was actually fine and how the war’s still going according to plan.

As Gessen put it, “most coups seem absurd at the beginning [and] if Putin’s regime ends before Putin dies, that end will look much like the events of this past weekend: Sudden, bloody, and ridiculous at first.”

When Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine 16 months ago, I said in these pages that he’d be gone in 24 months, one way or another. I still believe that.