The staggering scene takes place on this famous Saturday, June 24. Evgueni Prigojine, the boss of the Wagner mercenary group, has just taken over a Russian army headquarters in Rostov-on-the-Don and is talking to the Deputy Minister of Defense, Iounous-Bek Evkurov, and Deputy Chief of Military Intelligence Vladimir Alekseyev. Tense atmosphere between Prigojine the rebel and his two “hostages”. “I talk to you well, me, so why are you disrespecting me?” Launches the former prisoner to a pitiful Evkurov. “We are here because we want the head of the Chief of Staff [NDLR : Vitali Guerassimov] and Shoigu [le ministre de la Défense]“, continues Prigojine. “But take them!” Alekseïev cowardly, hilarious. We know the rest: Prigojine sends his troops to rush towards Moscow, shooting down several helicopters of the Russian regular army in the process.
How would this crazy epic have ended if this savage horde had not stopped a few hundred kilometers from the capital? Some already saw Vladimir Putin’s power wavering, the Ukrainians dared not believe it… But a mysterious agreement between Prigojine and the head of the Kremlin put an end to the operation. What’s in it? To this day, no one knows. It will take time to find out the underside of this story, but one thing is certain: it will leave its mark.
The power has been vacant
Putin, the man who, for more than twenty years, held the reins of Russia with an iron fist, has never seemed so weakened. A few weeks ago, pro-Ukrainian Russian militiamen waged war on the sacrosanct Russian territory, attacking several villages in the Belgorod region. But this time, after the capture of a crucial logistics center of the Russian army and a journey of nearly 800 kilometers towards the capital, the humiliation is total. “During the first hours of the mutiny, power was vacant, observes historian Françoise Thom. Putin completely lost face. It is a frightening admission of weakness. , behind its facade, is worm-eaten…”
Certainly, the regime has not fallen, and the man with the shaved head, who represented an existential threat to Putin, will be “satellite” far from Moscow, in Belarus. But Putin, who has always posed as the guarantor of order and stability, was unable to prevent the rebellion. The Russians discovered a leader incapable of settling the power struggles between his Minister of Defense and the indomitable Prigozhin who, if he had wanted to, could have achieved the unthinkable: besieging Moscow!
Putin had to ask for help from a vassal
Supreme dishonour, the head of the Kremlin had to lower himself to ask Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus whom he considers his vassal, to negotiate the end of the rush to Moscow. “Putin continues to brandish national sovereignty, but he had to seek help from outside the country, and in addition from a minor partner, comments Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist in exile. This is unprecedented and very embarrassing.”
The damage to the regime’s image does not stop there. “Prigozhin has shown everyone that Russia has no security forces and that its army is far from what we imagined before the war, whether it is dysfunctions in the command, in the ‘supply, logistics… All this consecrates Putin’s failure in areas where he considered himself a master, “said Maxim Trudolyubov, editor-in-chief of Meduza, the largest Russian-language independent media, in Riga.
Finally, “gracing”, for the time being, Prigojine, whom he had nevertheless accused of the worst crime in the Putinian system, that is to say “treason”, the head of the Kremlin, who so far punished ruthlessly any affront, gives the feeling that one can rise up against his power with complete impunity. Something to give ideas: “There are about twenty other militias, not to mention the security services, the GRU… We can very well imagine that other factions are moving”, slips Galia Ackerman. And the historian to continue: “It seems that Putin can no longer hold his famous vertical of power. It’s very worrying for him, it could be the beginning of the end.”
Crowds did not rise up to defend Putin
Undoubtedly Putin, who is not the type to forgive, will one day seek to liquidate the one who humiliated him in front of the whole world, if he considers that Prigojine can no longer be useful to him. He will also probably want to punish weak links within the intelligence services.
“Putin is extremely nervous when he loses control of a region, adds Andrei Soldatov, a journalist with a good knowledge of the Russian security services. The last time was in 2004, when Chechen rebels invaded the Republic of Ingushetia . Putin’s response was fierce.” At the time, the young president fired several FSB generals, launched a merciless hunt in the name of the fight against terrorism and recentralized power to the extreme, the first stage of his autocratic drift.
But, now, how far can Putin crack down? “He can take repressive measures to consolidate his authority, questioned by Prigojine, but also by the military setbacks in Ukraine. That would mean that the regime really tips over into Stalinism, but does Putin have the capacity? “, asks the historian Sergey Radchenko.
That’s the whole question. And it seems, at this stage, difficult to assess to what extent the legitimacy of the head of the Kremlin will be undermined by this crisis. We only know today, after the ride of the “Wagners”, that the crowds did not rise up to defend the Russian president… “When, on June 23 and 24, we passed through the cities of Russia, the inhabitants welcomed us with Russian flags and Wagner flags, they were happy to see us pass”, boasts Prigojine in a message broadcast on the evening of the 26th. This is, in fact, what some videos show.
As long as the economy holds, Putin will retain powerful leverage to pressure the elites. “Putin has linked his relatives to this war. They are under sanctions that will never be lifted. They need Putin because they have no other option for the moment,” said Maxim Trudolyubov. But in these circles of power, one could consider that the Russian president, who can no longer even control his relatives, puts the whole system in danger. A comfortable system, based on the capture of the country’s wealth, but which the war in Ukraine disrupted, by reducing resources. “Obviously, the political crisis will worsen, because the paralysis of the state apparatus, which had already appeared in broad daylight, will continue”, predicts Françoise Thom. Other clans could then rise up against the “tsar”. The post-Putin period seems to have begun.