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Vladimir Putin’s words could not have been clearer. In his speech on Russian television, he called it a betrayal and a stab in the back of the army, which the Wagner mercenaries were trying to do.
He did not name the coup initiator, Yevgeny Prigozhin. This alone speaks volumes for how Vladimir Putin stands by Prigozhin, his former cook and convicted criminal, in these hours. As a rule, the Russian president does not usually name his domestic opponents. Last night Yevgeny Prigozhin has definitely become one of Putin’s biggest enemies in the interior of the country.
A threat to the Kremlin
A struggle for power and influence has been raging for months between the leader of the Wagner mercenary group on the one hand, and the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the supreme commander of the Russian troops in Ukraine, Valery Gerasimov, on the other. Vladimir Putin watched this power struggle for a long time, but Prigozhin went too far with his attempted coup against the army leaders and his demand that Shoigu and Gerasimov be handed over to him.
Prigozhin’s attempted coup is not a sign of strength, but rather the desperate step of someone driven – whose influence with Putin has increasingly slipped away in recent months.
Now Prigozhin is directly challenging Vladimir Putin’s claim to power, plunging Russia into a domestic political crisis the country has not seen in decades. Putin appoints the top management of the Russian Defense Ministry. So whoever tries to overthrow the leadership of the military is, from Putin’s point of view, trying to overthrow them. If there is one thing that cannot be questioned in Russia under Putin, it is the president’s claim to power. If Putin does not succeed in crushing Prigozhin’s uprising in the next few hours, his credibility within the security organs will be destroyed. Something the Russian President cannot afford.
Prigozhin’s misjudgment
If Yevgeny Prigozhin expects to rally a majority of the Russian population behind him with his so-called “March of Justice” against the leadership of the Russian army, he has miscalculated. The past few months have clearly shown that the vast majority of people in Russia take the position that the war against Ukraine has nothing to do with them.
Reliable surveys are not available in times of war, but the wave of emigration after the declaration of partial mobilization alone showed the willingness to fight in large parts of the Russian population.
Most people want one thing above all: to be left alone by the Russian state. Armed struggles inland are not supported by a majority in the country and the images of closed highways in southern Russia and checkpoints at the entrance to the Russian capital Moscow inspire fear in the people and no enthusiasm for a leadership change at the top of the army.
A lost fight
Prigozhin speaks of not weakening the front in Ukraine with his coup attempt and of only wanting to take action against the top military leaders. However, this seems impossible: any large-scale domestic armed conflict draws attention away from the front lines, where the Russians are trying to hold off a Ukrainian counter-offensive. The images of tanks in Rostov in southern Russia and helicopters shot down next to the expressway in the direction of Voronezh, almost 600 kilometers south of the Russian capital, are reminiscent of images from a civil war.
But it is still a fight between mercenaries and the Russian security apparatus. A fight that Prigozhin will hardly be able to win. The security apparatus behind the President is too large and the people’s reluctance to see a violent change of power too great. This is also shown by videos from Rostov, in which city residents can be seen arguing with Wagner mercenaries and asking them to give up – that was the president’s behest. The Prigozhin struggle is doomed, as is Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. It’s only a matter of time.