For Ukraine, Wagner’s mutiny is an opportunity. Its counter-offensive, now three weeks old, has fallen behind schedule. There could be no more important moment to break through Russian lines
of 2022, at the moment when it became clear that Russia’s invasion had begun to falter, the generals planning Ukraine’s campaign grasped that their resistance on the battlefield could turn Russian commanders against each other. Infighting and disunity, they calculated, would be a crucial step in bringing home to Russia and its people that the war was unwinnable—and that the country was paying an intolerable price to satisfy the vanity of their president, Vladimir Putin.
It is still unclear whether either man has gone, or is about to. But Mr Prigozhin, who has apparently gone into exile in Belarus , has inflicted severe damage on Mr Putin and his war. Wagner’s troops are supposedly going back to the bases they left on June 23rd. By contrast, Russia and its weakened president find themselves stuck in dangerous new territory. Tactically, the war will be harder to fight. Strategically, it will be harder to win. And Mr Putin’s leadership has been gravely undermined.
Secondly, the mutiny has undermined Russia’s strategy. Ever since his initial assault failed, Mr Putin’s theory of victory has been that the West would come to believe that backing Ukraine is a waste of money and effort. However, Mr Prigozhin has shown that time may not be on Mr Putin’s side after all.
That leads to the third and most significant dimension of this 24-hour drama: its effect on Mr Putin’s leadership. Russia’s president has been humiliated. Wagner and Mr Prigozhin, an ex-convict who ended up as a Kremlin fixer,. In the Russian system, Mr Putin governs by managing the potentially lethal competition between rival factions. He oversees an armed truce. His inability to prevent Wagner’s mutiny means that he failed at his most important task.
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