‘Hapless’ Putin warned Wagner rebellion paves approach for future insurgent to topple him
Vladimir Putin has been left wanting “hapless” by the tried coup spearheaded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, together with his picture has been left irrevocably “tarnished”, it has been claimed.
And the Wagner Group founder’s act of rebel has offered a “script” for a future warlord to topple the Russian President, specialists in Russian politics Professor Rajan Menon and Daniel R DePetris have stated.
After occupying the southern Russian metropolis of Rostov on Friday night, Prigozhin’s mercenaries headed for Moscow by way of the M4 motorway, with the 62-year-old abruptly calling off the convoy roughly 130 miles south of the capital.
Putin responded by condemning the so-called “traitors”, without naming the Wagner chief – but charges against the Wagner Group related to the insurrection have nevertheless been dropped.
Prigozhin is in Belarus, according to its President, Alexander Lukashenko.
Writing in the Guardian, Prof Menon, director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities, and Mr DePetris, a fellow at the same think tank, said: “For Putin, the results of the turmoil are apparent.
“The Wagner group’s unimpeded march took Russia’s military and intelligence services by surprise and exposed the Russian system writ large as utterly inept – a far cry from the image of competence and strength that Putin has cultivated assiduously since rising to the presidency in 1999.”
Wagner’s “capture” of Rostov “left Russia’s Russia’s strongman wanting like a hapless bystander”, they argued, including: “That, at minimum, tarnished his image – an essential ingredient of his overweening power.”
Despite Prigozhin’s subsequent denial that he had been out to overthrow the 70-year-old, the debacle had served to attract consideration to the Russian defence ministry’s “general mismanagement of the warfare in Ukraine“, the pair added.
They stated: “In a 27 June speech, Putin assured the Russian people that all was well, that he had been on top of things all along and ordered the security forces to stand down to prevent fratricidal bloodletting.
“Whether Putin negotiated out of worry or out of a need to stop civil warfare is irrelevant; the actual fact stays that he got here to the desk and provided important concessions to get himself out of a scenario he was ill-prepared to deal with.
“Russians both inside and outside the elite doubtless noticed all this. As one Russian businessman said, ‘Putin showed the entire world and the elite he is no one and not capable of doing anything. It is a total collapse of his reputation.'”
While not “mortally wounded” Putin had show himself unable to deal with his first severe problem “with the competence and decisiveness critical to his aura”, Prof Menon and Mr DePetris stated.
Ordinary Russians would additionally probably be evaluating Prigozhin’s navy fatigues with Putin’s “plush residences at Novo-Ogaryovo and on the Black Sea”, they harassed.
They concluded: “As Prigozhin identified greater than as soon as, Russia’s generals sit comfortably of their workplaces, removed from the battlefields and secure from the results of their unhealthy choices.
“The mercenary boss additionally took purpose on the offspring of the wealthy and highly effective, together with defence minister Sergei Shoigu’s son, Danila, who has been noticed vacationing in Turkey.
“Prigozhin may disappear from the centre stage of politics – or even vanish altogether. But he may well have provided a script that some future rebel might use to indict the system and rally support against it. That could be his enduring legacy.”