Will defeat in Ukraine hasten Putin’s end, or could it be the other way around?
And all for – what? Ukraine is no nearer to being conquered than it was at the start. Indeed, it is on the offensive,Any leader of a democratic state who presided over a catastrophe on this scale, if he had not already resigned or been forced out, would be facing ignominious defeat in the next election. At the helm of a personalized dictatorship, with absolute control over the levers of state and near absolute control over mass communications, Mr.
Quite how this will all play out remains, of course, uncertain. Mr. Prigozhin’s ultimate fate is unclear, whatever assurances he might have been given, either by Mr. Putin or by his puppet, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. So, too, is the disposition of the Wagner Group. It was the threat of Wagner’s absorption into the Ministry of Defence, and thus the loss of his power base, that supposedly prompted Mr. Prigozhin’s desperate gambit.
The most likely explanation, and the one for which there appears to be some evidence, is that he had expected to find – indeed, had been led to expect – support for his insurgency from senior figures in the Russian military, perhaps even within the Kremlin, support that failed to materialize in the event. Who these might have been, what he might have been told – and by whom – is only starting to trickle out.
What was revealed in those chaotic hours over the weekend is of a piece with what has been revealed by the war: the ossification of the Russian command structure , the hollowing out of the Russian military , the general brittleness of Mr. Putin’s rule. At this point a number of potential vicious circles come into play. If Mr. Putin is not as strong as he had seemed, if it is possible to challenge him and survive, what is the response, first, among the countries on Russia’s periphery, the Kazakhstans and Kyrgyzstans, who had been accustomed to toeing the Putinite line until now?
And, with all of these divisions breaking out into the open, does Ukraine press its advantage? What is the effect on morale among Russia’s conscript soldiers, already low, at the sight of Russian elites divided amongst themselves? For whom, or what, are they fighting? What is the point? What was it ever? And if Ukraine does make a decisive breakthrough, what further impetus does that give to all of the dynamics of chaos I have just...
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