Anne Will on Russia Revolt
“Fear and helplessness in Putin”
7/3/2023 12:53 AM
“This Putin is not invincible at all,” finds out the ARD talk on “Anne Will”. After the revolt of the Wagner mercenaries, the discussion group probed the cracks in the Russian system of rule and the SPD and CDU bickered. However, one important question remains unanswered.
Mutiny? Revolt? Rebellion? Whatever the Wagner mercenary uprising just over a week ago, it directly challenged Vladimir Putin’s authority. At “Anne Will” on Sunday evening, the panel debated the dimensions of the soldiers’ march from Yevgeny Prigozhin to Moscow, and everyone agreed: the Russian president now wants to show strength, but is weakened. But how deep are the cracks in Putin’s system of rule and what does that mean for the war in Ukraine? Opinions differ on this.
“It was the first time that you saw Putin’s fear and helplessness,” says Irina Scherbakova right at the beginning of the show. The Russian historian, founding member of the Russian human rights organization Memorial, which won the Nobel Peace Prize, sees Putin’s long silence after the revolt, while “everyone” in the country was waiting for a reaction, as a sign of “panic”. Putin’s power has suffered “at least one shock” and the whole thing is a “very important sign of the political and military crisis”.
CDU foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen immediately agrees with the historian and speaks of a “spectacular event” and the “beginning of the erosion of power”. He believes that in Russia “the system and the rule is no longer the same.” And it will never be the same again, because it was based on the claim of not being able to be challenged. But now the whole world, including the Russian people, has seen: “This Putin is not invincible at all.” Röttgen goes even further and is certain: “Putin was confused, was no longer under mental control. He was panicking.”
Thumann: Putin suffered scratches
Röttgen’s SPD colleague in the Foreign Affairs Committee is holding back more. If Putin has lost control, Anne Will wants to know from Ralf Stegner. The foreign politician “doubts” and calls views like Röttgen’s “wishful thinking.” The Russian President may have underestimated Prigozhin, but it would be “wise not to write Putin off too early.”
Michael Thumann thinks similarly. The foreign policy correspondent for “Die Zeit” in Moscow recognizes a “moment of weakness” and believes that “Putin has suffered scratches”. After all, he had to put up with the biggest invasion since World War II in Russia and the population would not forget that. But the conclusion of the journalist, whose sources report behind-the-scenes purges of Prigozhin sympathizers now underway, is: “Putin is not counted. He is not about to be overthrown.”
Stegner then criticizes that “some think”, an indirect poison arrow directed towards Röttgen, that the insecurity in Russia caused by the revolt would be a good thing. The CDU man doesn’t want to let that sit on him and he attacks Stegner directly: “You’re being taken in by Putin’s narrative that the West should be afraid that everything will get worse when he’s gone.” The SPD politician angrily replies that he is “far away” from that, that one always has to act cautiously in foreign policy and that Putin is “perhaps more stable than we would like.”
“The situation is already dangerous”
Stability immediately becomes the main theme of the rest of the show. “If the change isn’t an improvement on the current situation, it becomes extremely dangerous,” says Stegner. “The situation is already extremely dangerous,” counters Claudia Major, because war is already an instability. The political scientist, a member of the Advisory Board for Civilian Crisis Prevention at the Federal Foreign Office, has the best idea in the group on this point and makes it clear: Germany must finally free itself from the “stability obsession” and learn the right lessons. “Putin does not bring stability, but instability,” says Major. In addition, politics must get out of the “one-dimensional escalation debate”. The danger of nuclear weapons is always pointed out, but Russia has already demonstrated “conventional escalation”, for example by shelling the civilian population.
Overall, Europe and Germany are not well enough prepared for power struggles in Russia, explains Major. In many places there is still hope “that everything will get better”. A quick and easy change is absolutely unrealistic. There could be a “change of power”, but this is not a regime change. A “collapse” is also possible. “But I think democratic change is very unlikely,” said the political scientist. So you have to be prepared for a “very long phase of instability and thus also uncertainty in Europe”.
SPD man Stegner praises the federal government
According to the Major, positive changes in Russia are most realistically possible if Moscow suffers a defeat in the war with Ukraine. With that, talk show host Will leads the panel on the subject of arms shipments, which could now give Ukraine a chance to exploit the cracks in Putin’s system. And immediately the partisan haggling begins. SPD man Stegner praises the federal government as the second largest supporter of Ukraine worldwide and struggles for words to explain why, in his opinion, Kiev should not receive any fighter jets. CDU adversary Röttgen rumbles: “We are the second biggest dwarf,” after all, the United States would provide much more aid.
Then Röttgen tries populism and states: “The question is: war or peace.” Stegner can’t think of much more than to say that German interests are not identical to those of Ukraine and that military action alone is not important. Röttgen then goes “over the hat cord that we are not doing enough”. But Stegner replies that the government is doing what it can and that “care must be taken that the war doesn’t spread”.
In the end, the important question of what exactly this revolt from a week ago means for the future remains unanswered with “Anne Will”. “I would be cautious in my judgment,” says Stegner. “Where will the erosion of power lead? We don’t know,” says Röttgen. Journalist Thumann believes that later, “when cracks appear in the system again,” the Russians will remember this “heavy blow” to Putin. Then the cracks could deepen. Political scientist Major points out that Prigozhin was the first to question the reason for the war, and not just the type of warfare. And historian Scherbakova recognizes “signs that more and more people in Russia are against the war.”