For months, Yevgeny Prigozhin had been hurling crude insults at the men who ran Russia’s war, and Vladimir Putin had said nothing in public. Then, on June 23 and 24, 2023, the Wagner Group chief turned his mercenaries on the military itself. In the weeks that followed, analysts and the head of the CIA tried to work out what the episode said about the people around Putin.
The feud that got out of hand
The target of Prigozhin’s anger was plain. He called Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov inept and corrupt, and his language grew sharper over the year. The Lowy Institute’s Ian Hill noted that Prigozhin could do this unchecked, which suggested he enjoyed some Kremlin protection. Many observers, Hill wrote, assumed he was useful to Putin as a way to keep pressure on the generals.
That fits a pattern Hill described as typical of Putin: tolerate rivalry between factions, keep everyone guessing about where his loyalties lie, and stay the final arbiter. The arrangement broke when Putin sided with Shoigu and Gerasimov and told Wagner fighters to sign contracts with the Russian military by the end of June.
Prigozhin then moved closer to criticizing Putin himself. In TIME, Arik Burakovsky argued the revolt was born of desperation, not a bid for the throne: Prigozhin wanted to seize Shoigu and Gerasimov, get Putin’s attention, and force talks on keeping his business alive.
A slow response in Moscow
The reaction at the top was halting. Wagner took Rostov-on-Don and came close to Moscow without much resistance, according to Burakovsky. Some officials and oligarchs scrambled to leave the capital or the country. Putin waited more than nine hours after being briefed before going on television, and another ten hours passed before he struck a deal with Prigozhin, reportedly closing the criminal case and sending him to Belarus. Putin’s address on June 24 spoke of treason and betrayal.
Hill drew a blunt reading from the speed of the deal: “Agreeing so quickly to strike a deal with Prigozhin suggests that uncertainty, even fear, reined in the Kremlin over the insurrection.”
What Washington said
CIA Director William Burns used a lecture to Britain’s Ditchley Foundation on July 1, 2023 to address it. He called the mutiny an “armed challenge to the Russian state” and an “internal Russian affair in which the United States has had and will have no part.” Burns pointed out that Prigozhin had opened with a “scathing indictment of the Kremlin’s mendacious rationale for the invasion of Ukraine.”
Burns saw a longer-term effect. “Disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership beneath the steady diet of state propaganda and practiced repression,” he said, and he described it as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the agency to recruit spies.
The Kremlin projects calm
Moscow insisted nothing had cracked. Putin thanked the army and security forces for heading off what he said could have become a civil war. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would come out stronger. Putin himself, then 70, was shown talking tourism and economic ideas and meeting crowds in Dagestan.
Burakovsky’s assessment was measured. Putin’s approval rating stood around 82%, and the belief that no alternative exists was still intact, at least for the moment. The rebellion did not signal a sudden plunge into volatility, he wrote, but it was a reminder that Putin is not infallible.
Sources
- Mutiny shows damage Putin has done to Russia, CIA director says (Reuters, via bdnews24)
- How Prigozhin's Rebellion Exposes Putin's Weakening Grip (TIME, Arik Burakovsky)
- Prigozhin's mutiny: What does it mean for Putin and Russia? (Lowy Institute, Ian Hill)
