Prigozhin Episode Will Only Strengthen Vladimir Putin | Opinion

"Wagner Revolt Puts Putin in a Weaker Position," announced a Wall Street Journal headline in the wake of the paramilitary Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin's show of force last weekend. "Could Putin Lose Power?" asked the New York Times. These were only two of many such comments bandied about as Wagner forces retreated from their positions south of Moscow and Prigozhin disappeared from public view. He is now in Belarus, where a late-hour deal brokered by President Aleksandr Lukashenko reportedly granted Prigozhin and some of his forces asylum in exchange for standing down.

While Prigozhin's gambit ended ingloriously after only 36 hours, more attention has been drawn to the episode's meaning for Russian President Vladimir Putin. After all, during an ill-advised and protracted war with Ukraine in which his regular military has performed abominably, Putin's government briefly lost control of an important pillar of armed support. Elements of Prigozhin's forces occupied the regional capital of Rostov, seized an important military command post there, and drove to within 125 miles of Moscow. In the process they are believed to have killed more than a dozen regular army Russian servicemen. After declaring Prigozhin's actions to be "treason" and vowing to crush its participants, Putin instead settled the matter in a negotiation outsourced to a foreign leader.

To Putin's hopeful opponents, these events strongly suggest that his regime is weak, brittle, and beginning to "crack." A fuller appreciation, however, reveals the uncomfortable truth: like most rulers who survive coups, Putin will almost certainly emerge more powerful than he was before.

Even describing Prigozhin's episode as a "coup" stretches the facts. At no time since he launched his operation last Friday has the disgraced warlord indicated that Putin was ever his target. Instead, he made clear, and confirmed in a public statement from Belarus after it was all over, that his only intent was to demand answers from his personal rivals in Putin's government, namely Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

Prigozhin, a vulgar Leningrad ex-con, slimy post-Soviet businessman, and relatively minor Putin acolyte, has no discernible ideological objection to how Russia is ruled or ambition to replace either Putin himself or Russia's current system of government. He fully shares Putin's authoritarian nationalism, xenophobic opposition to the West, corrupt oligarchic approach to the national economy, and ahistorical and self-serving view of Ukraine and its place in relation to Russia. His only objections to the war are that Shoigu and Gerasimov have performed poorly, left his Wagner forces undersupplied, and recently intrigued to have Putin remove them from his control and place them under Russia's Defense Ministry. As has often happened in Russian history, Prigozhin's beef was not with the supposedly "good ruler" but with the "evil advisers" who misled and disserved him.

Even if a rogue operation directed at underlings could constitute a "coup," this was a poor showing. Prigozhin claimed a maximum of 25,000 fighters in his Wagner Group when he started operations, only some of whom were involved in the weekend events. Only a few thousand drove on Moscow. Wagner forces also have no aerial components.

Russia's army, on the other hand, has an estimated 800,000 troops, in addition to large numbers of militarized security police and other elite formations for internal security. None of these forces, no elements of Russia's navy or air force, and not even one individual in Russia's political, military, or security establishment is known to have acted in favor of Prigozhin, voiced any degree of support for his actions, or denounced Putin. What remains of civil society and institutional leadership in Russia remained silent. When Putin stated last Monday that the crisis was averted by a show of national unity, there was no evidence to contradict him beyond residents of Rostov who casually took pictures with the Wagner troops as they withdrew and suspicions that Aerospace commander Sergei Surovikin might have quietly favored Prigozhin. Surovikin has not been seen since Saturday and is rumored to have been arrested.

When the crisis ended, it was the ostensible rebel leader Prigozhin who was isolated, deprived of his forces, and dispatched into exile under the dubious watch of Lukashenko, a Putin loyalist who has repeatedly compromised Belarus' sovereignty at the Kremlin's bidding, and who could, as many prominent observers predict, preside over or turn a blind eye to Prigozhin's premature demise on his soil. Meanwhile, in line with Putin's earlier decree, the Wagner forces that did not participate will dutifully become contract soldiers managed by the regular army and are reportedly already handing over their heavy weapons. Those who did participate will meet a likely unenviable fate.

Compare this situation to the actual coup in 2016 against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—a far-reaching but poorly organized conspiracy involving hundreds of senior officers, thousands of servicemen in military units throughout Turkey's armed forces, operations in almost every important city, the bombing of the country's parliament and presidential residence, significant public and civil society support, and a sophisticated statement of ideological opposition to Erdogan's rule. That massive effort dwarfed Prigozhin's limited and isolated protest, but when Erdogan narrowly survived nobody claimed he was in any way weakened or speculated that he would lose power. To the contrary, he quickly restored order, arrested or ousted tens of thousands of his opponents, successfully implemented authoritarian constitutional changes, and was just reelected president despite major social and economic problems.

Putin is already much farther down the authoritarian slope than Erdogan, but as bad as he is, he is in prime position to double down on his dictatorial rule, purge any real or imagined opponents, and take a harder line on every conceivable issue. For all his country's woes, he will continue to rule it with an iron fist for the foreseeable future.

Paul du Quenoy is President of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.