When I began traveling to Russia in 1990, I will never forget the advice I was given by Americans I met who were engaged in business and education. The repeated counsel I heard was “In Russia, nothing is as it seems.” During my previous graduate education in Russian studies, these words of Winston Churchill were often referenced: “Russia is a riddle, wrapped in mystery, inside an enigma.” Martin Malia, a scholar of Soviet Russia, noted that Churchill’s verdict was later modified by an American ambassador to Moscow, who said “Soviet Russia is not a mystery; it is only a secret.”
With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the archives of the Communist Party were opened to scholars for the first time, and the world of Lenin and Stalin was no longer a secret. The opening of the Party archives was initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (“openness),” but the transparency did not last long. During the early years of Putin’s presidency, he began to close independent news sources, forcing several of the oligarch-owners to sell their assets and flee the country. After the riots against his re-election as president in 2012, Putin and his security cronies dramatically increased domestic oppression, and Russian society quickly reverted to living in fear, as it had during Stalin’s reign of terror. As Putin’s government became increasingly autocratic, the Kremlin turned existing media into propaganda outlets for Putin, and politics entered a post-truth world. No voices of dissension were allowed. Once again, Russia became a place where “nothing is as it seems.”
The current crisis initiated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, is very complicated. There are no easy answers about why he chose to move his forces across the Ukrainian border into Russia and then seize control of two Russian cities – but in complex situations like this, reading between the lines of the news reports is important. One of the two cities, Rostov-on-Don, is a strategic center located 60 miles from the Ukrainian border, which houses the headquarters of the Southern Military District. We know that the Russian border guards did nothing to stop Prigozhin’s forces, nor did the Russian troops based at the headquarters; in fact, there are videos of Prigozhin engaging with the Russian troops in friendly conversation. This was a clear sign that there are major divisions within the ranks of the Russian armed forces – divisions that had previously only been talked about in secret, but that now were obvious. Before long, more signs of this internal division became clear.
As Anne Applebaum noted, in Rostov-on-Don “nobody seemed to mind his [Prigozhin] being there.” People shook hands with the soldiers in the Wagner Group, brought them food, and took selfies. When Progozhin left the city in an SUV, crowds cheered for him and some yelled “Wagner! Wagner!” These two insights are important to understand, despite the difficulty of knowing what lies ahead for Putin, Prigozhin, and Russia’s governing elites. No resistance to what appeared to be new rulers in Russia occurred in Rostov-on-Don. Instead, people were supportive of this dynamic, bold warlord who spoke the truth about the war; elsewhere in Russia, the citizens were apathetic.
When the Wagner Group began to mobilize and head toward Moscow, again there was little resistance along the way. No crowds flooded the streets in the capital city to show their support for Putin – a stark contrast to the August 1991 coup attempt, when thousands of people gathered around the White House in support of Yeltsin’s resistance.
Trying to unscramble the relationship between Putin and Prigozhin is very difficult because “nothing is as it seems” in Russia, including its governing leadership. It appears that Putin used Prigozhin as a counterweight against the leadership of the Russian armed forces, which he views as a threat, particularly in wartime when their position is magnified. Even after this attempted coup or mutiny, Putin harshly condemned the actions of the Wagner Group, but never mentioned Prigozhin by name. Both of these men are gangsters, and they have no hesitation to use violence to achieve their goals, even against innocent civilians in Ukraine.
What is next for Putin and Prigozhin is unknown. My email inbox has been overloaded with reports on these events in Russia and the possible implications for the war in Ukraine. I will continue to track these developments and share my perspectives with you. There appears to be widespread agreement among leading scholars on Russia that Putin is “damaged goods,” and has been weakened by these events, especially by his choice to flee Moscow when the Wagner Group began their move toward the Kremlin. No one knows if Putin will begin to remove Russian troops from Ukraine to protect the current leadership, or if Russian troops will begin to surrender or simply leave their vulnerable positions in Ukraine and head back home.
Prigozhin boldly announced that Ukraine did not start this war and that NATO is also not responsible for initiating this conflict. His harsh criticism of Russia’s military leadership – and his characterization of the leadership as being driven by greed and self-interest – has now been heard across Russia and is openly being discussed on various talk shows, which was never possible before. This may turn the apathy of the Russian people into modest forms of resistance.
What we can learn from these events is the fragility of autocracies, especially kleptocratic autocracies in which leaders steal assets from their people. There are no checks and balances, no guardrails to constrain leaders who are out to accumulate wealth and who need war to justify their domestic repression and to silence criticism. When these autocracies weaken, the outcome is unpredictable; many break apart quickly, while some are able to survive. The war in Ukraine may be the determining factor in Putin’s survival. He made it a “war of choice” and may soon reap the consequences of this decision.