The cook’s failed coup

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his effort to bypass Russia’s regular military and governance structures while personally dipping into the country’s military budget, appears to have created a monster that briefly threatened the very foundations of his security services–based regime, and possibly the scope of his personal power. For now, the coup is over — and its mastermind may be a dead man walking — but the Putin regime may never recover.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, once an inner-circle figure known as “Putin’s cook” and head of the private military company Wagner, recruited veterans and hardened criminals into a Russian shock-troops army. Wagner fought in Africa, Syria and most recently in Ukraine, where it lost thousands of men in the bloody, desperate and exhaustive battle over the town of Bakhmut. At some point, Prigozhin became increasingly, and very publicly, at odds with the Russian military establishment.

As the split widened, Putin’s cook demonstrated that he could run circles around Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. It appears that he gained some support at the highest levels of the FSB security service, the military and among the public, but not enough to topple the czar.

When Prigozhin declared that the war in Ukraine was started because of Shoigu’s vanity; involving plans to appoint a Putin ally, Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, as a quisling president of Ukraine; and for Putin’s inner circle of avaricious oligarchs to plunder Ukraine’s economic assets, the chef crossed the Russian red line of omerta. 

On Friday, after claiming that his troops had been attacked by Russian government forces, the Wagner group quickly captured Rostov, a large Russian city in the south and the headquarters of the Russian Southern Military District. Wagner then rapidly extended their control all the way up to Voronezh and to the boundaries of the Moscow region. During Wagner’s lightning 500-mile advance, Russian ground forces failed to oppose them, and only minimal aerial attacks were conducted against them. Wagner shot down several Russian attack helicopters and two military planes, killing 18 pilots. 

In speech Saturday morning, Putin denounced the coup and called Prigozhin a traitor, bizarrely comparing himself with Czar Nicholas II, who lost the war with Japan in 1905, World War I, and his own crown, family and life in the Russian Revolution. For a moment it appeared that Putin had left Moscow and Prigozhin might enter the city and finish things off. Many prominent Russian leaders, meanwhile, refrained from criticizing him, suggesting that he may have broad support at the highest echelons of power. On the other hand, none openly endorsed him. 

And then Prigozhin stopped. He turned his troops around amid reports of a deal brokered by President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. There are reports that the Russian secret services threatened Wagner commanders’ families, causing Prigozhin to turn tail. Leaks from Moscow suggest that Shoigu may eventually be let go. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Wagner members will be pardoned and Prigozhin is allowed to leave the country for Belarus (or to pursue his mercenary ventures in Africa), as part of the package — unless Putin decides to arrest, court martial or execute him.

Whatever the outcome of the Wagner action, this is the most serious challenge to the post-communist Russian state since 1993, when the Supreme Soviet rebelled against Boris Yeltsin, who brought in tanks to suppress the attempted coup. 

Prigozhin has demonstrated just how weak the Putin regime is, and how the Russian president’s own “chef” could potentially put nuclear-armed Russia into the hands of a fragile and extremely dangerous dictatorship of former KGB officers and organized criminal “authorities” — Vory v Zakone, whom Prigozhin represents. 

Russia’s international stature and its future military performance in Ukraine are likely to suffer from these events, as will Putin’s power. Russian bosses in the security services, law enforcement and the military will have questions about Putin’s management skills. So will the oligarchs, for whom Putin has created extreme inconvenience, to say the least. He took a reasonably thriving (albeit corrupt) mid-income country that exported tens of billions of dollars’ worth of hydrocarbons, fertilizer, agricultural goods, and other raw materials, and collapsed its markets. He caused $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves and oligarchs’ funds to be frozen in Western banks. He also caused Western companies to shut down their operations in Russia, cutting off investment, technology transfer and the provision of management expertise. Putin has almost single-handedly transformed Russia into a de facto dependency and raw materials appendage of China, not unlike what it was in 1230s–1480s under the Mongol and Tatar Golden Horde. 

Moreover, Putin appears to be losing the war in Ukraine that he promised to win in a week. With Wagner demoralized, and Russia’s regular troops poorly trained and exhausted, it is unclear why the Russians would keep fighting. The country is bleeding and is at a political dead end. After the March 2024 presidential elections, if Putin is still alive, another coup may arise from the ranks of the power-hungry younger generation of the military, special forces and the security services — and this time it may be a coup that the aging Putin cannot stop. 

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is senior fellow (non-resident) at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and author of “Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis.”