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Putin's Days May Be Numbered [1]

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Date: 2023-06-25  

RO37 has a front page on Putin and Prigozhin, Ukraine Update: The Coup that Wasn't, on how Putin is much weaker now after Prigozhin’s failed . . . whatever it was he was trying to do. I don’t want to duplicate that story, just present a slightly different slant on it.

In Russian history, coups generally get their motivation from failed military action; WWI is the classic example. And there is certainly enough motivation here; it’s probably part of what drove Prigozhin to act: his troops had succeeded in taking Bakhmut when Putin’s regulars couldn’t, and not only did not get thanked for it (nor, apparently, paid), Russian forces attacked his troops (or so he claims).

But I don’t think the army will be the driving force that gets Putin out of power. It will be the oligarchs. Yes, Putin has some control over them, but they also have control over him; he needs their support to run Russia. He can threaten or eliminate a few of them, but not all. They have backed Putin’s war up til now (or at least kept quiet), but can’t be happy with the way it’s been bungled, nor with western sanctions keeping them from their trips and houses and all the other western goodies they’ve become accustomed to.

The oligarchs, and the army, probably shied away from backing Prigozhin because he is even nastier and more brutal than Putin. Now Prigozhin is out of the game, and his forces are being broken up and integrated into the regular army. At the same time, Putin has shown himself to be weak, isolated, making poor decisions (to put it mildly) that are hurting powerful players in Russia, and they sense his vulnerability. As I see it, the army is too disorganized and fractured to plan a coup, and there are still those elements loyal to Putin who would put up a fight. A palace coup organized by the oligarchs seems to me a more likely possibility.

Nick Walsh at CNN has his own analysis: Bizarre and chaotic 36 hours in Russia feels like the beginning of the end for Putin. While he doesn’t single out any actors, he does say this:

Putin’s position was clearly weakening because of the war’s catastrophic mismanagement. But how he would be removed - what possible circumstances could permit that - was something that eluded officials and analysts. This was not a likely option. But now it has happened, we have a glimpse behind the thickset curtain the Kremlin relies upon to hide its infighting, incompetence and frailty, allowing it to project an outsized confidence – a post-Soviet omnipotence. It’s pretty ugly in there it seems. . . . We can only guess whether the thought of Prigozhin in charge will cause such panic in the elite country houses of suburban Moscow that support for Putin sustains. Yet his vulnerability is now assured, for the first time in 23 years – two decades in which he has accrued plentiful enemies and debts.

I’m willing to guess the elite have had enough.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/25/2177601/-Putin-s-Days-May-Be-Numbered

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