Aris Roussinos
UnHerd, June 26, 2023
“The tensions Putin had permitted to escalate within his war cabinet — whether as intentional policy or sheer incompetence must remain a matter of speculation — now looked to be spiralling out of control.”
Waking up on Saturday morning, Putin must have wished he’d kept catering in-house. Only the day before, the Ukraine war seemed to be proceeding relatively well for Russia, at least by the lowered expectations of this stage in the conflict. The Ukrainian counteroffensive had made little progress in its first three weeks trying to breach Russia’s well-prepared defensive lines, and US officials were already briefing not to expect much more. The war had slipped into a tempo favourable to Russia, playing to the great strength of authoritarian systems against democracies: the ability to outlast the fickle whims and short patience of electorates and the politicians catering to them.
But the brief and spectacular rebellion of Putin’s caterer-in-chief-turned-condottiero, Yevgeny Prigozhin, seemed to suddenly upturn this calculus, highlighting the fragilities inherent in authoritarian regimes.
Putin’s attempt to render Russia coup-proof by establishing multiple, rival power structures had created a striking weakness at the heart of his system. The great irony in all this was that the entire purpose of Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenary company was to firewall the Russian home front from the human cost of Putin’s foreign adventures, thus ensuring the stability of the regime. By the time Prigozhin’s disaffected warrior band was approaching the gates of Moscow, merrily shooting down the helicopters sent to delay their advance, the disadvantages of this approach appeared to far outweigh the benefits. … [To read the full article, click here]
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