Armed Insurrection in Russia. Putin should have studied his Machiavelli

It took one modern pirate and 25,000 men to expose the fragility of Russian oligarchical rule

  Yevgeny Prigozhin

Suddenly the fragile foundation on which Russia’s ruling oligarchy rests has been exposed. Who would have imagined that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group would turn on Putin and precipitate an armed insurrection?

Yet when Prigozhin told the world that he had crossed the border into Russia with his army to overthrow Russia’s military leadership he in effect called into question the legitimacy of Putin’s rule. The ease with which his troops took control of military buildings and the airport in the city of Rostov indicates that Putin’s army is not an effective and certainly not a reliable force. Crossing the Rubicon has never seemed easier.

Even more remarkable was the Wagner chief’s sit down with a deputy Russian defence minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov..Prigozhin told the defence minister that he would hand back control of Rostov only if Valery Gerasimov, the head of the Russian military and Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Defence Minister are handed over to him. When you watch the video it becomes evident that Prigozhin is not just talking but publicly humiliating the hapless defence minister

At first Prigozhin was careful not to directly defy Putin. His focus is on blaming Russia’s poor military leadership for the death of thousands of soldiers. In a video filmed in Rostov he stated that until the two men were handed over to him and ‘they are no more, we will stay here blocking the city of Rostov and then we go to Moscow’.

He has been careful not to directly confront Putin. However Prigozhin’s attack on the military leadership of Russia is also a in/direct attack on Putin’s political authority. This threat was eventually recognised by Putin who condemned Prigozhin and his forces as traitors. In response Prigozhin has said that Vladimir Putin was “deeply mistaken” to call him and his forces traitors, telling the leader that he and his men would not surrender. he stated that ‘no one is going to surrender to the demands of the President, FSB, or anyone else’.

It is unclear what is the motivation driving the Prigozhin coup. Nor do we know what is his endgame. However an armed rebellion during the course of major conflict with Ukraine signifies the beginning of the end of the present form of oligarchical rule in Russia and raises the possibility of a civil war

At the very least the coup raises questions about the wisdom of Putin’s reliance on the mercenaries of the Wagner Group. Putin has heavily relied on the Wagner Group to do his fighting on a number of fronts. From Syria through to Africa and now in the Ukraine, these mercenaries developed a reputation for being the shock troops of the Russian State. That Moscow relied so heavily on a mercenary force indicated the low regard with which Putin held sections of the Russian Army.

Yet mercenaries are never a substitute for an army whose loyalty is to the nation and its people. Throughout history mercenaries proved to be unreliable, disloyal and frequently a threat to the ruler that hired them. This point was eloquently elaborated by the Renaissance Italian political philosopher Niccoló Machiavelli in his famous essay, The Prince. He explained:

‘I say, therefore, that the arms with which a prince defends his state are either his own, or they are mercenaries, auxiliaries, or mixed. Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you’.

Putin should have studied his Machiavelli and not employ the Wagner Group to build a mini-state within a state.

In a televised statement Putin stated the obvious. He called the mutiny ‘a mortal blow’ and warned that anybody who took up arms against the Russian army was a “traitor”.

Putin said: “We are fighting against anarchy and capitulation. This internal mutiny is a mortal blow to us, it is a blow to our people as a whole.”

“All those who deliberately embarked on the path of betrayal, who prepared an armed rebellion, embarked on the path of blackmail and terrorist methods, will suffer inevitable punishment. They will answer both before the law and before our people,” Putin stated.

Putin knows that he is up against a formidable foe, which why he did not mention Yevgeny Prigozhin by name.

There will be a lot of speculation about who is really behind the coup. Conspiracy theories will flourish. America, China and all the usual suspects will brought into the frame. Nevertheless the real issue at stake are not the motives that led to armed insurrection but the integrity and the viability oligarchical power in Russia. The insurrections serves as an invitation to other members of the oligarchy to review their options.

Even before this insurrection, the war in Ukraine had already represented a moral defeat for Moscow. Now Prigozhin threatens to expose the Russian state as a super sized Potemkin Village. There is now a real possibility that the insurrection will lead to oligarchical infighting - which may even lead to civil war. Whether the Russian Federation can actually withstand the pressures towards fragmentation remains to be seen.

Dangerous times ahead -not just for Russia and Ukraine but the whole world.