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Vladimir Putin created the Wagner group, which almost overthrew him. But the Wagner group is nothing but Putinism in its purest, most distilled form, writes Morten Strand.
CLEAR?: Vladimir Putin in Derbent in Dagestan before the weekend. Photo: AP / NTB Show more
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Published on Sunday 02 July 2023 – 22:27
It was a warrior-president Putin’s “Frankenstein moment”, Saturday 24 June, just over a week ago. The monster that Putin had created, Yevgeny Prigozhin, turned on his creator, trying to destroy him. But Putin won the drama, and the leader of the mercenaries in the Wagner group had the choice between dying or going into exile. Fortunately for Putin, he chose exile. He can die later.
President Vladimir Putin has received a lot of attention after he drew this drawing on a tour of the Russian company NextTouch. Video AP / Twitter Show more
There is little doubt that Prigozhin is created in Putin’s image. He satisfies almost all criteria in the world of Putinism, and was the extreme phalanx of the movement. Prigozhin’s value to Putin was precisely that he went to extremes, even if his last extreme was one too many. However, the circumstances of competing clans also within the military – which is also part of the Putin system – forced Prigozhin to break the most important criterion in Putinism – loyalty.
It started with a lie. Mass production of lies. In the summer of 2013, Prigozhin opened his “troll factory” in his hometown of St. Petersburg. He employed a number of young, computer-savvy people who worked in shifts producing lies online. Under fake profiles, they spread falsehoods as comments on current news. In January 2015, I met Ludmilla Savtsjuk, who the autumn before worked for two months “under cover” in Prigozhin’s factory. The specialty was to create confusion, and to spread conspiracies, said Savtsjuk. Regarding Russian crimes in Ukraine, it is the task of the trolls to cast doubt on all Western explanations, and instead spread several alternative explanations about, for example, the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine in 2014. The purpose is not to find any truth, but to spread confusion.
Last fall, Prigozhin said that it was his trolls who worked to influence the 2016 US presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. Prigozhin’s trolls worked with fake profiles, and fake news to spread lies and conspiracies in American swing states that Trump could win. American intelligence has long believed that Russian online trolls played a role in this election.
It continued with violence. Massive violence. Prigozhin’s mercenaries in the Wagner group became the extended arm of the Putin state in foreign policy. The group was registered in 2015, and their specialty was providing security services to questionable regimes in Africa and the Middle East. As a mercenary army, they were well paid, and also became involved in questionable trade in African natural resources. Brutal and well-organized, the Wagner soldiers served regimes or power groups that were not supported by Western countries. Most typical is Syria, where they operated as military units, supporting dictator Bashar al-Assad. They pursued Putin’s foreign policy with weapons and murder, while Putin could say that these were not his soldiers, who had something to do with the Russian state.
It was undeniable convenient for Putin. As an elected head of state, he still had a semblance of legitimacy, while often having bandits do the work for him. The Wagner group has committed war crimes in three continents, while Putin has folded his hands – as he has so often done – and said; it was not me. For the violence was a continuation of the lie, both of which had long since become Prigozhin’s specialty, and characteristic of the Putin state. Prigozhin, his bought online trolls and mercenaries, had become the ultimate phalanx of the Putin state. Something that was strongly confirmed before the weekend, when Putin said that it was the Russian state – and not Prigozhin himself – that had financed Wagner’s warfare in Ukraine.
But last Saturday snapped the troll. Frankenstein and his monster had their fateful meeting, and the monster – at least this monster – lost. So, what happens now?
Was Putin weak that allowed Prigozhin to grow so strong that he challenged the military leadership, and thus the regime? Yes, undoubtedly. Was Putin strong enough to get through this without having to physically fight Wagner? Yes, but with a little more doubt.
Those are the results on the battlefield that determines whether Putin can survive his own war in the long run. Large losses of land this summer and autumn could decide Putin’s fate. His problems are enormous. His vanity requires him to fight a war that almost no one wants. He can probably afford to fight this year, and maybe next. But a further mobilization would be dangerously unpopular. And even if the sanctions against Russia have been less effective than the West had hoped, Putin cannot afford to finance a new major offensive in Ukraine.
2023-07-02 20:28:53
#Putin #worst #enemy
