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June 24, 2023

Russia: What a real insurrection looks like

By Monica Showalter

Want to see what a real insurrection looks like?

Look to Moscow.

By now, you've probably heard that Vladmir Putin has got big problems there.

There's an uprising, an actual insurrection from the armed Wagner mercenary group of 25,000 led by Russian rival oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin. The group has been fighting in Ukraine alongside Russia's troops, but much more effectively than the Russian army, which had to have made its leader ambitious. Prigozhin, recall, is a revolting ex-criminal and based on his private phone calls, detests Putin. The uprising was triggered by a few days of negative words with the Russian military, which Prigozhin claimed wanted to take over Wagner, and now Wagner has struck out and literally taken over the southern Russian city of Rostov.

Which is home to Russia's southern military command which controls all of Russia's Ukraine war activity, and about half of Russia's land forces. It's a big deal, because in the north, the navy is the main military player and is focused on the Arctic. The army is in Rostov. Wagner's Prigozhin knew where the land forces were, and instead of targettin Moscow first, he strategically targeted military bastion Rostov, blocking all communications, and getting into the headquarters of the military command, where all the records, including of war deaths, were. The city and the military command fell easily to Wagner because so much of the Russian army is dispatched to Ukraine. What's more, discontent with the Russian conscript army and how it's run is so intense there that are many reports of soldiers peeling off and joining Wagner.

Reports say that the city of Voronezh to its north has now fallen and the Wagner army is now just a few hours from reaching Moscow, where the military there has stepped up readiness.

 

 

The Ukrainian press, which is hardly unbiased, says they are being greeted by the locals as heroes:

 

 

I listened to the Twitter spaces site for the latest on Russia right through the night, falling asleep to the yakkings of the various invited Russian experts, and thought it was a good way to get the latest as many voices contributed from various sources to what was going on. I think it's still going.

For awhile there, they argued that Prigozhin was a friend of Putin (apparently not reading that Daily Mail report about the phone call) and all he wanted was for Russia's defense minister, Shoigu, to resign. I felt that was absurd, given that Wagner had taken over an actual city, and by its own claims, had shot down three Russian military helicopters. You don't do that if you just want a personnel change.

Putin was absent, and there was a lot of speculation at Twitter spaces about that, too. Was he hiding? Was he scared? Was he playing dead, so as to see who on his team was loyal and who was not when he sprang back into action? Prigozhin said that he was too sick to come out, and as a "friend" of Putin he probably would know. Was he heading out to exile in Uruguay? No one knew.

Russia's TASS official news agency reported that Prigozhin was facing 20 years in the can once they caught him, as if to suggest that his action was that of a mere mutineer. That's only about a decade more than American basketball star Brittney Griner got for a petty pot violation. 

In other words, the threat seemed a little light and the activity, which literally threatens to topple the Russian state, seemed a little downplayed. It may be that the Russians were in some kind of paralysis or shock.

 But Putin did come out eventually, looking strong and resolute:

 

 

His reading of Russian history, particularly what happened in 1917, was absolutely spot on.

His focus on this insurrection, exclusively through the lens of the war in Ukraine, is notable. He's focused as hell on that, even as the Russian state is literally tottering.

His call to the Russian nation to rally behind him, may or may not be effective, given the discontent and falling economy I know of in Russia, even among his loyalists.

It's notable that he urges Russians not to join Wagner. He's concerned about that.

He doesn't convey panic, but a calm assurance that he will take care of this problem. 

I don't know about that, given the scope of the problem -- we are talking about falling cities -- and many reverberations of Russia's chaotic "Time of Troubles" post-Ivan the Terrible period of the past.

One thing he doesn't mention is that he dropped himself into this problem. What kind of leader permits a mercenary army,  created from criminals emptied from Russia's jails, complete with a St. Petersburg headquarters in a glassy skyscraper (now being raided), and glossy promotional brochures, to form and co-exist and fight right next to the real Russian army? It seemed just a matter of time before this mercenary army would challenge him, particularly because it was so much more effective on the battlefield than the leaden, bureaucratized, angry-conscript-filled Russian army? It was a forgone conclusion that they would revolt, and who knows what kind of machinations the CIA might have been up to? There was that missing $6.2 billion nobody knows what happened to in the Ukraine funding matter, for one...

Some of his critics argued that the video was a deep-fake, with Putin speaking before an obvious green screen (likely) and the healthy Putin figure himself some kind of deep-fake, given Putin's ailing health.

Maybe so, but the message was pretty well done.

Still, it seems the Russians have been caught off guard. The attack on Rostov was a very strategically planned attack and now the march to Moscow seems very well planned in advance. Prigozhin is believed to have many sleeper agents along the way, so he doesn't, thus far, seem to be running into problems as his army marches. One wonders if Prigozhin was the author of the recent drone attacks on Moscow, which at the time, seemed to be the work of Ukraine, though in my account, I said it could have been him.

The interesting thing about the Twitter spaces event, and the tweets I found (I retweeted everything that looked interesting) is that many Russia experts who have either saddened or disgusted me for their Trump hate in the past, come off looking pretty plugged in and sensible  -- Bill Browder, Michael McFaul, even Alexander Vindman.

McFaul seems to be on target here:

 

 

Yes, Putin is weakened by this, and all the hoopla around the BRICS and Putin's global influence, are quite likely to fall apart unless he gets the situation under control, which at this point, is only a maybe, and even if he does, he won't be the same. 

There is likely a lot of disinformation out there, so one must be cautious. While it's true that Putin is taking a body blow here, the guy who could follow him, Prigozhin, should he take over -- is even worse. He's the muscular thug I wrote about here. Russians always did want a strong leader, but one should hope it's not this guy.

Bottom line here is that Putin created this problem for himself by allowing this mercenary army to even exist. Now, even if he beats it back, which he might not, given the broken communication lines and the takeover in the south and the Russian army peeling off, he's paying the piper.

Image: Twitter screen shot

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