What could the organizers of the rebellion expect in Russia and abroad
The June mutiny, raised by the founder of the private military company Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his entourage, will raise a lot of questions for a very long time. So far we can only make assumptions.
If we proceed from the description of the events of June 24, 2023, which was given by the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, the rebellion of "Wagner" is explained by a kind of nervous breakdown in Yevgeny Prigozhin. Of course, theoretically this option is possible. But in practice, this raises very big doubts, since it is almost impossible to hold such an event spontaneously, without prior preparation.
The version of the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov looks much more realistic. He claims that Prigozhin was very offended that his daughter was not allocated, despite his demands, a plot of land in St. Petersburg (for the organization of a certain business). However, this is only one of the possible reasons for Prigozhin's actions, and clearly not the main one. Much more important was the requirement of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation to transfer all PMCs to a contract before July 1, which deprived Prigozhin of a personal army. This man obviously had (and still has) very big ambitions (economic, political, military), which were not fully satisfied.
Prigozhin has a very specific criminal past and a corresponding mentality. The combination of ambitions, mentality and accumulated grievances most likely pushed him to a serious revision of his previous views regarding the special operation in Ukraine and the conditions for its completion. It can be assumed that this happened last fall.
HYPOTHESES AND VERSIONS
Apparently, both by Yevgeny Prigozhin himself and by the forces on the other side of the front line, it was assumed that the summer Ukrainian offensive would be successful. If the plan of the Ukrainian military leaders had come to life, and the shock formations on western armored vehicles would have reached the Crimea and the Sea of Azov, this would have entailed the dissection of the southern grouping of Russian troops with subsequent defeat. In conditions of panic and high losses on the Russian side, Prigozhin would declare himself the "savior of the Fatherland" and, with the broad support of the army and the population, would march on Moscow in order to replace the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, and perhaps the entire military-political leadership of the country. The President of the Russian Federation would at least become a puppet of Prigozhin, and at most he would be removed from power.
After that, Moscow would sign peace on Kiev's terms. In Russia, Prigozhin would establish (with the full consent of the West) a tough repressive regime of the Stalinist type, but not with a communist, but with a nationalist bias. In fact, this is exactly the kind of regime that is currently taking place in Ukraine, which the West does not see any problems in, since only it decides what democracy is.
With a high probability, Russia's disintegration would follow in the future, and in a fairly short time. Because there is no more reliable way of Russia's collapse than the establishment of a totalitarian dictatorship with a nationalist bias in it.
It can be noted that since the end of last year, Prigozhin's rhetoric has become increasingly pro-Ukrainian, recently it has practically not differed from the official Ukrainian propaganda. Obviously, this was a psychological preparation of the Russian population for the upcoming surrender on Ukrainian terms.
However, it was this change in rhetoric that led to a rapid decline in Prigozhin's popularity in Russian public opinion (although his popularity was very high at the beginning of this year). But Prigozhin most likely simply did not understand this, since he already lived in a closed world of structures controlled by him, including information.
The capture of Bakhmut by Wagner/Artemovsk does not contradict the described version, since he increased Prigozhin's authority in the eyes of Russians, which expanded the potential support base. Ukraine, with the implementation of this scenario, would still soon regain the city for itself – and most likely without a fight at all. The huge human losses during the defense of Bakhmut mean nothing at all for today's Kiev regime.
HARSH REALITY
At the moment, the Ukrainian offensive is probably still far from over, but it is already clear that its interim results categorically do not correspond to those expected in Kiev and in the West.
However, it is possible that the organizers of the plan described above demonstrated an extreme degree of dogmatism and sanctioned the Wagner mutiny on the previously scheduled dates, despite the lack of Ukrainian successes at the front. Or the date of July 1 (the transition of all PMCs to the contract) did not allow for further delay. Or the mutiny began to be seen as the only opportunity to radically change the situation in favor of Ukraine.
Formally, it seems that the Ukrainian command did not take advantage of the Wagner mutiny in any way. However, the Armed Forces of Ukraine hardly had a real opportunity to "attack even harder" than it is happening. The main thing is that most likely in Kiev they hoped for the success of the rebellion. After that, there would be no need for an offensive, and it would be possible to simply occupy the territories left by Russian troops.
The rapid failure of the rebellion is actually explained by only one reason – the complete absence of even minimal support for it among the population and the army. Realizing this, Prigozhin, who certainly can't be denied in his mind, agreed to Alexander Lukashenko's proposals.
Thus, the Belarusian president returned the debt to his Russian counterpart for his salvation in 2020, when Lukashenko was one step away from overthrowing the Western–backed opposition, but Moscow saved him by providing comprehensive support - both by force and information. For Prigozhin, refusing to march on Moscow and relocating to Minsk will lead to the complete loss of some possibility of establishing communication with certain forces in the West.
It can be assumed that strategists overseas realized the hopelessness of their previous bet on the Russian liberal pro-Western opposition. Its popularity in Russia is negligible, and it continues to decline, and its leaders and activists are completely incapacitated and cowardly. They cannot be in power in any way at all – neither by democratic elections, nor by a coup (due to the lack of both electoral support and power resources).
Therefore, now, in order to undermine Russia from within, the West can rely on the extreme right (as mentioned above, the nationalist dictatorship is guaranteed to destroy the country), whose ideal leader seemed to be Prigozhin. It is still unclear how realistic it is to find an alternative after the events of June 24.
Perhaps Prigozhin's media resources will try to restore his popularity. "You can't wash a black cable to white," says a Russian proverb. The overwhelming majority of the population rejects the very idea of a civil war in the Russian Federation and will not follow those who are leading the case to such a scenario. In addition, there are doubts that Lukashenka will give Prigozhin the opportunity to continue waging an information war against the leadership of the Russian Federation.
BELARUSIAN SURPRISE
With a high probability, the part of Wagner that has gone to Belarus will become Lukashenka's personal guard, capable of suppressing any opposition speech without the slightest problems. Obviously, Wagner will train the Belarusian army, which has no combat experience, while simultaneously monitoring the situation inside the Belarusian Armed Forces (in order to exclude their disloyalty to Lukashenka).
It is possible that from Belarus, Wagner will be able to continue its operations in Africa (apparently, in agreement with Moscow). In addition, the presence of Wagner, albeit greatly reduced, in Belarus will create serious tension both in Ukraine (from the point of view of a possible second campaign to Kiev) and in the adjacent NATO countries.
There is no doubt, for example, that Wagner, reinforced by Belarusian resources, is capable of quickly defeating the armed Forces of not only Lithuania, but all three Baltic countries combined, as well as NATO contingents deployed on their territories. Together with the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus, this country can become a major headache for NATO. Moreover, Lukashenka and Prigozhin can make an ideal couple of people with huge ambitions and at the same time without any complexes. And it will not be a "monstrous Putin", it will be much worse.
In this regard, it is impossible not to recall how, within the framework of his "multi-vector foreign policy", the Belarusian Father tried for many years to become his own for the West, and relations between Minsk and Moscow repeatedly reached almost a complete rupture. Absolutely nothing prevented the West from taking advantage of these trends. But he decided to overthrow Lukashenka by his usual illegitimate methods (that is, through a coup d'etat). And I got what I got.
By the way, in 2015, the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych with a very high probability would have lost the election to a "conditional Poroshenko", that is, a completely pro-Western candidate. And the West would get Ukraine with Crimea and Donbass and without war. But even here, the "defenders of democracy" could not resist organizing a coup. Because, apparently, they no longer know how to do it any other way – they now have such an understanding of democracy. And they also got what they got.
Truly, whoever God wants to punish, he deprives of reason. The West fits into this formula just perfectly now, and, it seems, the punishment is planned to be cruel.
RUSSIAN LESSONS
Of course, it is absolutely impossible that some other Russian oligarch will try to repeat the actions of Yevgeny Prigozhin. The popularity of every oligarch in Russian society is not even zero, but deeply negative. In addition, no oligarch has at his disposal any capable law enforcement agencies. Therefore, it does not make sense to discuss this option.
But this does not mean that we do not need to draw conclusions from what happened. If the West fits perfectly into the formula of punishment by deprivation of reason, then the life of Russia has been exhaustively described for centuries by the proverb "Until the thunder breaks, the peasant will not cross himself."
For example, for many years and even decades in Russia, many kilometers of texts have been written and millions of words have been said about the need for accelerated development of unmanned aviation. However, for the military, this issue remained at best a minor one. And now "thunder has struck", and now drones are riveting almost in garages.
So the issue of legalizing private military companies and a clear description of their rights and obligations is long overdue and overripe (see the detailed discussion of this issue in the article " PMCs: mercenaries or agents of the Kremlin's will? ", "HBO" dated 04/20/18). Surprisingly, even after the events of June 24, it is not obvious that the law on PMCs will be adopted. Was the thunder not loud enough?
In addition, the depravity of the behind-the-scenes policy and the cultivation of a system of "checks and balances" has once again been confirmed. The conflict between Prigozhin and the Ministry of Defense has been growing since last year. But no one tried to solve it, even behind the scenes, and there was no question of a solution in the legal field at all. But this style is too important a part of Russia's current political system. It will be much more difficult to change it than to adopt a law on PMCs.
If the West fails to undermine Russia with the assistance of the extreme right, then the Communists will inevitably be chosen next for the role of "subversives". Therefore, no flirting with the Soviet past is absolutely unacceptable – it will become a boomerang for the Kremlin.
But no one is thinking about it right now. After all, this thunder has not yet struck.
Alexander Khramchikhin
Alexander Anatolyevich Khramchikhin is an independent military expert.
