After Russia’s Brief Military Revolt, Are Putin’s Generals Still Vulnerable?

ANALYSIS – It was an exceptional event this past weekend, even with all the prior posturing by the Wagner Group founder and the recent chaos in Russia’s border region. It was the first armed upris­ing since the 1991 Soviet coup d’état attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev.

But as suddenly as it was launched, it was over. Altogether it lasted less than 24 hours.

And it wasn’t so much a coup against Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin, as an attack on his ineffective military leaders.

The rebellion featured bitter rivalries between Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder and leader of the Wagner mercenary group, and the grossly incompetent heads of Russia’s military – Sergei Shoigu, Defense Minister, and Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff.

The uprising could be said to have begun when Prigozhin accused Shoigu and Gerasimov of “mur­der­ing tens of thou­sands of Rus­sian sol­diers” as a res­ult of their dis­astrous inva­sion of Ukraine.

Prigozhin’s hatred of Shoigu and Gerasimov came to a head during the grueling six-month fight for Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Between November 2022 and May 2023, as many as 10,000 Wagner fighters perished in Bakhmut.

And Prigozhin ranted against Russia’s military leadership in a mes­sage issued at about 21:00 local time on Fri­day. “This is not a mil­it­ary coup. It is a march for justice,” he said.

The final main trigger for Prigozhin’s putsch appears to have been Putin’s backing of Shoigu’s move to make Wagner sign contracts with the defense ministry earlier this month. This would have put Wagner and Prigozhin under the thumb of the two army leaders.

This was unacceptable to Prigozhin, who was seen as a powerful warlord who only reported to Putin.

The apparent strategic intent was a show of force to have the two Russian military leaders resign or be removed. Some say he was too ambitious.

But it was just as important to emphasize that neither he, nor his Wagner forces, would be subordinated to the Ministry of Defense.

Tactically, the focus of the insur­rec­tion quickly became Rostov-on-Don, the headquarters of Russia’s south­ern com­mand in charge of the Ukraine invasion, which Wagner forces briefly occupied. Russian troops reportedly stood down and offered no resistance.

By mid­day on Sat­urday, a con­voy of Wag­ner vehicles and fight­ers was head­ing along the M4 high­way through the Vor­onezh region. The Institute for the Study of War reports that Wagner forces shot down seven Russian aircraft as the army attemp­ted to inter­cept it.

The convoy con­tin­ued to head north. But by 20:30, Prigozhin had a fresh mes­sage.

“In the space of 24 hours, we have made it as far as 200km (120 miles) away from Moscow,” he said in a voice record­ing on Tele­gram. “Now is the moment when blood could be spilt,” he said. To avoid this, “we are turn­ing our con­voy around.”

He had made his point. He was a force to be reckoned with. And Russia’s military leaders were incompetent buffoons.

By Sunday morn­ing, Wag­ner had crossed back out of Rus­sia into occu­pied Ukraine. The coup was over.

It turned out that a deal had been struck between Vladimir Putin and Prigozhin, with Belarus’ strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko serving as mediator.

There is no public information available yet on the points of the deal, but as of Wednesday, Gerasimov and Shoigu remained in place at the Kremlin. And Prigozhin is in ‘exile’ in Belarus, not far from the borders of Russia and Ukraine, where he is reportedly building barracks and facilities for his troops.

Still, both Gerasimov and Shoigu likely remain vulnerable.

And the two military leaders’ departure could have been part of the brokered deal that led to Prigozhin standing his men down. The Kremlin has denied this, but Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow-based defense think-tank, thinks otherwise.

He told the Financial Times (FT): “Shoigu and Gerasimov are now obvious lame ducks and they will be removed, I think.”

Others aren’t so sure.

As the Financial Times reported:

The failed revolt has given Russian President Vladimir Putin a stark choice — whether to fire the generals or let them remain in command of his faltering invasion of Ukraine, with both options carrying a significant risk of further blowback both for the war and his regime, analysts say.

“Shoigu and Gerasimov are so bad in their jobs that it’s dangerous to Putin to leave them in place,” said Dara Massicot, a senior political scientist at the US-based Rand Corporation. “But loyalty and stability are number one for Putin. I just don’t see how he’s going to have these terms dictated to him like this.”

But maybe Putin will just let an appropriate amount of time pass to save face and then fire one or both. Or maybe Putin himself might be in danger in the Kremlin. It is a lot of speculation at this point.

Regardless, as one Western military expert reportedly said, Prigozhin might want to stay away from windows in high buildings for a while.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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