![]() ![]() The short-lived mutiny was the result of his mafia-style rule of Russia.Įspecially striking about this whole incident are three things. But Prigozhin got a little carried away, and Putin overestimated his own ability to control the monster that he had created. Putinism is a bit of a house of cards - he played Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries off Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov presumably to spur Russian defense forces onward in their ill-managed “special military operation” in Ukraine. We just saw some of this spill rather crudely out into the open because high politics under Putin is a game of personal loyalties rather than of institutions. It has merely demonstrated something that serious Russia watchers have known all along - Putin is not infallible and all powerful Russian politics exist, there is internal strife, and elites sometimes have deadly turf battles. But we must be careful not to draw the conclusion, as many analysts have already rushed to do, that this incident has dealt Putin’s regime a death blow. ![]() There is much we still don’t know about the peculiar end to Prigozhin’s 36-hour mutiny against the Russian military leadership. Her most recent book is Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order (2021). Kathryn Stoner is senior fellow and the Mosbacher director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute, professor of political science at Stanford University, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. ‘Putin fears internal dissent more than he fears NATO and Ukraine’ BY KATHRYN STONER That’s a challenge Putin may have trouble meeting. The burden is now on Putin to show that Putinism means something other than chaos and a failing war, weakness clear to Russians and to Putin’s friends and foes in the wider world. The Russian state by 1917 was huge but hollow. Bad idea putting himself in the place of Tsar Nicholas II but apt: Nicholas II presided over an unsuccessful war, incompetently led. Putin himself brought up 1917 as an analogy. Prigozhin was able to seize the city of Rostov-on-Don and drive on Moscow because, it seems, he either had tacit support in a lot of places or that a lot of people in the Russian system didn’t care enough to exert themselves to stop Prigozhin and his small force. But, faced with a military mutiny, Putin had to negotiate. ![]() That doesn’t mean Putin will fall tomorrow. We have learned in the past 48 hours that Putin’s hold on power is vulnerable and that the Russian state is decrepit. ![]() Here’s what they had to say: ‘Putin is vulnerable and the Russian state is decrepit’ BY DANIEL FRIEDĭaniel Fried is former assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, former NSC senior director for Europe and Eurasia, former ambassador to Poland, and now a Weiser Family distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council. There’s also the complicating factor that there might be much more behind this settlement between Putin and Prigozhin than we understand now. Some see a future of bitter infighting among elites in Russia and others see an escalation of the war in Ukraine. Some think this is the beginning of the end of Putin’s rule while others think he could use the episode to consolidate his power. ![]()
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