Prigozhin's Rebellion: The Aftermath

What Next For Russia?

As I stated the other day in discussing Yevgeny Prigozhin’s brief rebellion against the Russian Ministry of Defense, anyone thinking they understand what just happened in Russia is either misinformed or delusional.

To Coup Or Not To Coup?

This, of course, has not stopped the usual suspects from indulging in random readings of Russian tea leaves and making other pontifications about Russia and the future of the war in Ukraine. Even alt-media financial analysts want to weigh in on what Prigozhin’s Rebellion means for stock markets—apparently what Wagner Group’s founder does or does not do next will determine how well investors will fare for the rest of 2023.

Bottom Line

We are probably the closest we’ve been to seeing a defined path to peace since the invasion occurred, but its impact on markets will be muted as the world has changed a lot in the past 18 months.

There is some small risk that this all gets worse before it gets better.

Sigh….because no one can sound like an “expert” by saying “nobody knows where this is going” I guess. Ugh.

If anything, what is likely to follow from this abortive mutiny is, if anything, less clear now than it was in the hours immediately after Prigozhin ordered his forces back to their field camps. It is prudent, therefore, to unpack some of the major “analyses” circulating through the media and understand some of their shortcomings. Russia’s position as a major grain and energy exporter, and Ukraine’s historical position as a major grain exporter, precludes the possibility of simply ignoring events in Ukraine altogether.

With that in mind, let us see what, if anything, we can discern from the media reports about Prigozhin’s Rebellion.

One non-story that is enjoying perhaps a bit too much attention in the immediate aftermath of the mutiny is the revelation that US intelligence agencies were aware that Prigozhin was planning some sort of action as much as two weeks before the uprising actually occurred.

U.S. spy agencies picked up intelligence in mid-June indicating Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin was planning armed action against the Russian defense establishment — which he has long accused of bungling the war in Ukraine — and urgently informed the White House and other government agencies so they were not caught off guard, several U.S. officials said Saturday.

However, this is less remarkable than it might seem—one could have assessed that much just from news reports detailing Prigozhin’s ongoing feud with the Russian MoD.

There was certainly a sign that matters were about to come to a head mid-June when Prigozhin publicly refused to sign a formal contract with the defense ministry by July 1.

The blunt refusal to comply with the order marks the latest flashpoint in a long-running feud between the mercenary boss, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, and Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, that has highlighted disunity in Moscow’s ranks and infighting over the management of Russian troops in Ukraine.

For months, Mr. Prigozhin has been publicly lambasting Mr. Shoigu and Russia’s military leadership, characterizing them as incompetent fat-cat bureaucrats who are ruining operations in Ukraine.

Even among mercenary forces, the refusal to follow an order is not something that can go unnoticed or unchallenged for very long. The US intelligence community could easily have picked up their “intelligence” on Prigozhin’s planned attack simply by picking up a newspaper.

Moreover, that was merely the latest salvo. At the beginning of June, Prigozhin accused the MoD of mining the roads out of Bakhmut after Wagner forces had taken that much contested Ukrainian city.

According to Prigozhin, there were explosive devices placed in around a dozen locations along Wagner troops' exit routes, including "hundreds" of anti-tank mines.

"We conducted investigative actions jointly with law enforcement agencies to document everything. Currently, investigations are underway," Prigozhin said.

Those who placed the explosive devices were "representatives of the Russian defense ministry."

"When asked why they did it, they pointed their fingers upward," Prigozhin added, suggesting that the orders came from higher-ranking officials.

At a minimum, Prigozhin was laying the foundations of a case even then that the MoD wanted him and Wagner Group gone, and were none too particular about how that happened. Certainly it is hardly beyond the realm of reason that, if Prigozhin believed the MoD wanted to do him harm, things might have reached a point where launching a lightning strike on Moscow was the best option available.

The depth of the rancor between Prigozhin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was put on stark display at the beginning of May, when Prigozhin stood in front a number of dead bodies—presumably Wagner Group casualties—and laid the blame for their deaths directly on Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

Prigozhin appeared next to dozens of bloodied corpses that he said were those of Wagner fighters. His expletives were bleeped out in the video published by his press service.

"We have a 70% shortage of ammunition. Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the ******* ammunition?" he yelled into the camera.

Those responsible would go to hell, Prigozhin shouted, before saying that Wagner's losses would be five times smaller if it was adequately supplied.

With public tirades such as this being far from an isolated occurrence with Prigozhin, an intelligence assessment that Prigozhin was going to make some sort of move against the Mod rightfully belongs under the heading “thank you, Captain Obvious!”

The story of how US intelligence knew the rebellion was coming reads more like a bit of PR posturing by the US intelligence community, a fresh set of bragging rights about how accurate their read on Russia has been.

U.S. spy agencies had indications days earlier that Mr. Prigozhin was planning something and worked to refine that material into a finished assessment, officials said.

The information shows that the United States was aware of impending events in Russia, similar to how intelligence agencies had warned in late 2021 that Vladimir V. Putin was planning to invade Ukraine.

Yes, the spy masters got this one right—as would anyone who had worked on the set of a James Bond spy movie and read the papers.

Not to be outdone in overstating the obvious is the reflexive observation that the uprising would ultimately work to Kyiv’s advantage on the front lines in Ukraine.

Chaos in Russia works to Kyiv’s advantage, Ukraine officials said on Saturday, but it remains to be seen whether President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his army can capitalize on the disorder caused this weekend as mercenaries marched towards Moscow.

Late on Saturday, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a founder of the Wagner army, said he was halting his “march for justice” on Moscow after a deal that spared him and his mercenaries from facing criminal charges. The deal also exiled Prigozhin to Belarus.

“Today the world saw that the masters of Russia do not control anything. Nothing at all. Just complete chaos,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, urging Ukraine’s allies to use the moment and send more weapons to Kyiv.

Certainly Prigozhin’s surprise march on Moscow has the capacity to roil the chain of command between Moscow and the front line forces in Ukraine. If Prigozhin is sending Wagner Group tanks towards the Kremlin demanding the ouster of the Defense Minister and several of his aides, the average Russian soldier in a trench in Ukraine is naturally going to experience a “Whisky Tango Foxtrot” moment.

Moreover, one only needs to review the coverage the mutiny received in the Russian media to realize that the entirety of the Russian government was somehow taken by surprise at this turn of events. When the government of a minor republic in Russia’s North Caucusus region ramps up security measures in response to events in Rostov-on-Don, it is pretty clear that there was a broad measure of panic being felt on the government side of things.

As Substack writer Eugyppius noted on Twitter at the time, the lack of any serious opposition to Wagner forces also suggests Prigozhin enjoys a substantial measure of support within the military.

This observation sparked a lengthy and at times snarky discussion on Substack Notes about how “real” the uprising was.

One can only imagine how intense similar discussions are in the trenches in Ukraine—it’s a given such discussions are being held.

Will Prigozhin’s uprising encourage other disgruntled military units to mutiny? At this juncture it may be fairly said that the outcome will not serve as a discouragement to those who might want to mutiny. To say more than that would be mere speculation.

Similarly, and at a minimum, these events do not weaken Ukraine’s forces; neither do they strengthen Russia’s forces in Ukraine. The very best view of Prigozhin’s rebellion from Russia’s perspective is that it has no impact on Russia’s forces in Ukraine, while the most probable outcome is that it has had and will have some impact—and that impact will be negative.

However, in the immediate aftermath of the mutiny, what is being reported by both Russian and western media is that there has been little practical change in battlefield conditions. TASS even picked up reporting from the New York Times that the uprising had not produced any defensive gaps for Ukrainian forces to exploit.

Ukraine will surely look to take advantage of the chaos caused by Mr. Prigozhin, but there did not seem to be any immediate defensive gaps to exploit, according to American officials and independent analysts.

WIth Western and Russian state media explicitly reporting the same thing, it becomes difficult to dismiss the reporting on either side as mere propaganda.

While dissension within any armed force will overall be seen as reducing its combat effectiveness, the exact extent to which that happens is always problematic. While Prigozhin’s rebellion arguably does improve things for Ukraine on the battlefield, it has not as of this writing precipitated even a partial collapse of Russian forces along the front lines. Whatever practical benefit Ukraine may derive from this is likely to take time to appear and may not be as much as some commentators wish to believe.

Of course, no major news story would be complete without a politician or two graciously deciding to speak on behalf of whole nations. Thus Congressmen were quite willing to share their views on how bad this is for Vladimir Putin.

Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) believes this mutiny means Putin has no more credibility with the Russian people.

Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that the armed rebellion from the Wagner Group exposed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “lost credibility with his own people.”

Anchor Shannon Bream said, “So, how concerned are you at this moment? What does this say about Putin’s hold on power? There’s instability in a country that has thousands of nuclear warheads.”

Cardin said, “Well Putin brought this upon himself doing business with the Wagner Group we know what they are thugs, dealing with thugs. So this was not unexpected.”

He continued, “Putin has lost his credibility with his own people. His account of why he went into Ukraine is now being challenged, I think, with public opinion and Russia itself. We recognize that we have to be very careful with regards to the nuclear capacity of Russia.”

While this is not impossible, there is at present no indication within Russian media at least that this is the case. Putin is still the man in charge and the media still presents him as the man in charge. More specifically, Russian media is walking back earlier reporting that the criminal case against Prigozhin has been dropped, which apparently is continuing—meaning Putin is leaving his options open with respect to dealing with Prigozhin.

The investigation of the criminal case on the organization of an armed rebellion against the founder of the Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin did not stop, a source close to the Prosecutor General's Office confirmed to TASS on Monday.

"The criminal case against Prigozhin did not stop. The investigation continues," the source said.

Additionally, there are reports sourced to British intelligence agencies suggesting that Prigozhin’s family may have been threatened, and that played a role in his decision to abort the march on Moscow.

Russian intelligence services threatened to harm the families of Wagner leaders before Yevgeny Prigozhin called off his advance on Moscow, according to UK security sources.

Those same sources suggest Prigozhin only had around 8,500 fighters with him on the march to Moscow, not 25,000, the number which had been claimed previously. As such, Prigozhin potentially never had the numbers to engage anyone at Moscow and was always heading into certain defeat.

These are merely reports, and there is no good provenance by which we may confirm them at this time, but if they are true it suggests that Prigozhin and not Putin was the one who blinked. If Putin stared down Prigozhin then on what basis can it be said he has “lost his credibility” with the Russian people? If Prigozhin lacked the troop depth to carry out a coup, then Putin was never in jeopardy.

Tales of Putin’s imminent demise are thus almost certainly overstated. All these headlines should be taken with several grains of salt.

• Wagner Group’s ‘coup’ was short-lived, but the end is near for Putin

• How the Ukraine War Ends? The Fall of Vladimir Putin Has Begun

• Klobuchar: Russian Rebellion Shows ‘Crack in the Strength’ of Putin at Home

• Russia Has Lost The War In Ukraine

Their conclusions may prove true, but at present those conclusions are speculation and nothing more.

The simplistic narratives must be discounted at this time, if only because there is a fair amount of confusion being reported across the intelligence and media spaces.

For example, US intelligence analysts are reported as being “surprised” the Russian Army did not put up more resistance to Prigozhin on the road to Moscow.

As the picture became more clear to US intelligence analysts that Yevgeny Prigozhin was about to mobilize his Wagner troops inside Russia, the expectation was that his march toward Moscow would encounter much more resistance and be “a lot more bloody than it was.” 

There was surprise, a US official said, that Russia’s professional military didn’t do a better job of confronting Wagner troops as they moved into Rostov and up toward Moscow.

Compounding that surprise, a US official said, was the swiftness of the deal that was struck on Saturday, which the Kremlin said was brokered by Belarus.

Even Russian media outlets such as Kommersant expressed a fair bit of surprise at both the mutiny and how it ended.

The mutiny attempt, undertaken at the end of last week by the private military company (PMC) Wagner, ended as unexpectedly as it began: by Sunday evening, almost nothing reminded of it, except for broken roads and minor damage to houses in the places where the rebels were staying . It was possible to resolve the conflict promptly and with a minimum of losses through negotiations with the participation of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, through whose mediation the main agreements were reached: PMC fighters return to their camps and will be able to conclude contracts with the Ministry of Defense if they wish, and Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is released from criminal persecution and leaves for Belarus. According to the deputies of the State Duma, the events of June 23-24 once again proved the need for the speedy adoption of a law regulating the activities of PMCs.

For this reason, we cannot take at face value even Russian commentators such as Kommersant’s Dmitry Drize, who indicated this would not result in any shakeup to Russia’s political leadership.

There was foreign interference, - this is how Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic described the events that took place in Russia. Meanwhile, Western leaders refrained from making any assessments, saying only that they were monitoring the situation. To date, the rebellion of the Wagner group has been stopped, in accordance with previously reached agreements. PMC leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is in Belarus. Kommersant FM political observer Dmitry Drize does not expect any major changes in the Russian government in the near future.

Similarly, characterizations in the Russian media that Russian National Guard units avoided engaging the Wagner column to prevent bloodshed are far too convenient an explanation for the relative lack of resistance Prigozhin encountered along the M4 to be taken at face value.

According to one of Kommersant's sources, the order to strike at the Wagner columns was not given, since the authorities tried to avoid unnecessary casualties both among the civilian population and among ordinary PMC fighters - "out of respect for their military merits." In addition, the units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Guard in Rostov-on-Don were ordered to move away from the headquarters of the Southern Military District and not interfere with the actions of Wagner.

In other words, Russia’s internal defense forces were told to stand down the whole length of the M4 and to let the Wagner column reach the outskirts of Moscow largely unopposed. That hardly seems a realistic response by internal defense forces, whose reason for existence is to prevent such incursions from reaching the Russian capital.

While none of the main narrative threads both in Western and Russian media can be regarded as completely reliable at this time, there are a few practical observations I feel comfortable making about the aftermath of Prigozhin’s rebellion thus far:

• We can reasonably say that the rebellion ended too soon for Ukraine to exploit any internal chaos it might have created within Russian command and control channels. Whether there will be strategic weaknesses within Russian forces as a consequence of the rebellion which Ukraine can exploit remains to be seen.

• Russia’s internal defenses either failed to be properly activated or refused to confront the Wagner column. If Ministry of Internal Affairs and National Guard commanders intentionally allowed the column to progress as far as the outskirts of Moscow, one has to question their professional competence if not their loyalty.

• While the feud between Wagner and the Russian MoD that is the stated catalyst for the mutiny has been building for the past few months at least, Prigozhin either seized what he believed was an opportunity or reacted to an extreme provocation (there has been no confirmation of the “friendly fire” incident against Wagner’s field camps Prigozhin claims were a deliberate attack on his forces). Accordingly, he may not have had a fully formed strategy on what to do once the column reached Moscow, which might have incented him to accept a brokered deal. It also would explain why Wagner leadership might have been vulnerable to threats against family members—there simply had not been time to get family members to safe locations.

• Putin—and, by extension, the Russian leadership—did not see this coming at all. Putin’s speech with its apocalyptic references to 1917, combined with the chaotic on-off-on “investigation” of Prigozhin for “armed rebellion” are difficult to reconcile with an organized, prepared response to an anticipated maneuver by Prigozhin.

• Despite the reactive nature of actions on both sides, Putin’s government was able to broker a deal and orchestrate it in such a fashion that it appears Prigozhin is the one who blinked rather than Putin. The key word, however, is “appears”. With an almost negligible amount of detail available involving the deal that was struck, it is pure speculation to say which side “blinked” first. Regardless of which side blinked first, the result of the deal is that Putin at least outwardly retains full control of the government and, ultimately, the military.

• While the Russian MoD apparently plans to incorporate Wagner forces into the regular military, such absorption will not happen overnight. The organizational effort that will entail is going to detract from preparing any fresh Russian offensives in Ukraine—regardless of the final outcome of Ukraine’s ongoing albeit bogged down counteroffensive, Russia at some point has to go back on the offensive if it wants to bring this war to a successful conclusion. Absorbing Wagner troops is going to hamper planning and preparation for renewed offensive operations.

If these assessments of what is being reported by both Western and Russian media are accurate, then any expectation that Ukraine will quickly gain an upper hand in the fighting or that Putin will soon be “retired” one way or another is likely to be met with disappointment. There simply is not any immediate change to the status quo along the front lines or in the Kremlin that can be seen.

Thus far, Prigozhin’s rebellion has done nothing to alter the stalemate that is the front line situation in Ukraine. The consequences of the rebellion may yet end that stalemate and confer advantage on one side or the other, but that advantage is not yet discernible, nor is there any guarantee that such advantage will even emerge.