June 30: Wagner’s “Ride of the Mercenaries”

In which, Russian soldiers do what Russian soldiers do in wartime, Biden names the economy after himself, and SCOTUS does what SCOTUS does in June.

Wagner’s “Ride of the Mercenaries”

Those of you who use the Substack app and see my “Notes” (hint, hint… check out my Notes!) will already have seen my initial response to the events in Russia this past weekend. Short story made even shorter: Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries launched a mutiny against the Russian Ministry of Defense (not Putin, most definitely not Putin, said Prigozhin) that was over in 24 hours.

This week, the story has been about Western media sources trying to figure out what the heck happened, and what this means for Putin’s rule.

The official line from the State Department, quickly picked up by American media, is that this demonstrates the weakness of Putin. The line from President Biden is that this demonstrates that Putin is clearly losing the war in Iraq. Wait, what?

But if you ask the experts, the people who watch Russian politics and the Russian military closely, they were clear that it's too early to tell what the final outcome of this mutiny is.

What we do know is that some kind of deal was brokered by Belarus President Lukashenko (remember this guy?) between the Kremlin and Prigozhin that saw Wagner troops largely disbanded and either a) absorbed into regular Russian army units or b) sent into exile in Belarus with their boss.

The fact that this didn’t turn into a bloody precursor to a civil war, that there appeared to be no popular demonstrations in support of Prigozhin, and that Putin showed a remarkable level of clemency (for now) to the mutineers doesn’t suggest this is a leader whose regime is ready to collapse. In fact, it would indicate the opposite. So, I’m decidedly skeptical of any claims to suggest that this is causal to Putin’s final end.

Historically, we know two things about Russian politics: 1) Mutinies in the military are a time honored tradition and have rarely resulted in regime change and 2) Russian regimes tend to look very strong until they’re not making their downfall very hard to predict.

More immediately, and practically, the clemency of Putin towards Wagner is likely an indication of how indispensable the organization has become to Russian foreign policy, especially in regions like the Middle East and Africa. A wholesale disarmament of Wagner would compromise several missions in those regions, so it would seem like Putin would like to avoid that. Also, private military companies (PMCs) like Wagner have proven to be useful shock troops in Ukraine, and I’m sure Russia would like every man it could get at the front right now. 

In other words, there’s good reasons besides regime survival for Putin to make this mutiny a big nothingburger and move on with some selective pruning… he’ll have Prigozhin assassinated later.