To protect his business, Yevgeny Prigozhin built a populist political platform, pitching himself against the rich and lazy elites. The Wagner Group’s mutiny exposed the state’s decay
On June 24th, as a convoy of armed militia charged at high speed towards Moscow, that promise—which was first broken years ago—looks more bankrupt than ever. Led by a violent warlord, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner Group mercenaries drove from Russian-occupied Ukraine,and a military plane, and killing perhaps 20 Russian troops along the way. A furious Mr Putin spoke about history once again, evoking the return of soldiers from the front in 1917 and “the tragedy of the civil war”.
Worse was the corrosion of Russia itself. To protect his business, Mr Prigozhin built a populist political platform, pitching himself against the rich and lazy elites. Wagner’s mutiny exposed the state’s decay. Russia has lapsed into a violent, lawless place with undefined borders and rival private militias.
Mr Prigozhin’s mutiny represents a public breakdown of that system. Mr Putin did not mind him occasionally attacking the army chiefs. It was a way of spurring them on. But when the conflict started to spill into the open, Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the defence staff, persuaded him to integrate Wagner into the regular structure.
Indeed, Mr Putin’s vast repressive machine terrorises Russian society by torturing peaceful protesters—including a man who died in custody in Rostov for handing out anti-war leaflets a week before the city was taken by mutineers who have not been charged. But it faltered when faced with armed soldiers and ex-convicts. Theintelligence service, heirs to Stalin’s secret police, kept their heads down. The army stayed in its barracks. The national guard were nowhere to be seen.
Now that Mr Putin has shown such obvious weakness, nobody can say how fast his remaining authority will crumble, if it does so at all. Much depends on the factions close to power. Within the government there are broadly three: the army, thePrigozhin and friend in happier times
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