Circus

Russia under Putin’s iron grip has become a morbid circus – morbid because the clowns in this show hold nuclear buttons that imperil the rest of humanity.

Last Saturday, the world watched with amazement as Yevgeny Prigozhin and about 25,000 heavily armed fighters occupied the headquarters of Russia’s southern military district at Rostov-on-Don, threatening a march on Moscow. This important base is the clearing house for troops and war material being deployed in Ukraine.

Prigozhin heads the Wagner private militia, generally considered Putin’s private army. It was the only Russian unit that made any real territorial gain in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine the past year.

The Wagner group was formed in 2014 mainly to undertake military activities in Syria, Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic pursuant to Moscow’s foreign policy goals but with plausible deniability. In exchange for the brutality it inflicts in these areas, Wagner won control of lucrative mining areas. Lately, it has been involved in the civil war raging in Sudan even as it carried the brunt of the fighting in eastern Ukraine using recruits from Russia’s prisons.

The Russian military establishment was clearly blindsided by Prigozhin’s move and could only respond by assembling a defensive ring around Moscow. Western intelligence agencies anticipated such a move. It is testament to the incompetence of Russia’s army that only they seem to have been surprised by Prigozhin.

The possibility of a coup subsided only after the president of Belarus brokered a stand-down. Under the terms agreed upon, Prigozhin would withdraw to Belarus and Moscow will not press charges against him.

One might be tempted to say the most serious political crisis faced by Putin’s regime has piped down. But, as of the latest available reports, Prigozhin is nowhere to be found. He is certainly not in Belarus. It is not easy to conceal a force of over 25,000 in a tightly policed state. This man must be a true master of illusion.

I sat through the morning of Monday, waiting to see how the global markets would react to these bizarre developments in Russia. The markets hardly moved, probably because all the world is still processing the weirdness of it all.

After Prigozhin used social media to announce his presence in the Russian base Saturday morning, it took Putin several hours to address his people. After delivering the usual they-will-be-crushed speech, he again disappeared and remained invisible the next two days.

One former KGB official interviewed on TV said this is Putin’s usual operating code. During moments of danger, he disappears into a hole. He will need a really deep hole at this time when the regime he leads is said to be at its weakest point.

This crisis has not ended. It has only begun. There is a sense that there are more dramatic events forthcoming as the Putin regime implodes.

After his threatening speech Saturday, Putin appears to have pardoned the treasonous Prigozhin. That can only happen because the Russian president is not confident of his grip over his own security apparatus.

Putin employed the classic formula of all tyrants imposing themselves on their own people: allow rival factions to fester and pit one against the other. In this case, the jockeying for position between Prigozhin and Russia’s top military officials appears to have magnificently backfired. These factions are now out to completely obliterate their rivals.

We have yet to hear from Putin, Prigozhin, the minister of defense and the army commander. Not even the president of Belarus seems to have any idea where the main protagonists have gone. In the meantime, confusion reigns throughout Russian society. It was bad enough that Russian state media was unreliable. It is worse that no one seems ready to address this crisis.

It would be folly for Prigozhin to retreat to Belarus. It would be only a matter of time, as we know from innumerable precedents, before he is shot or poisoned.

It would be folly for the 40,000 or so Wagner fighters to accept integration into the Russian army. If they break up, they would be decimated. We know from history how brutal and unforgiving political infighting in Russia could become. We know from recent events that people who earn the ire of Putin have a tendency to fall from windows or ingest poison.

One news organization so aptly described Prigozhin as the “abominable showman” for his skills a manipulating media for his own ends. He had, after all, set up a digital media company that was condemned for interfering in the 2016 US presidential elections that led to Trump becoming president. He was sanctioned for this role.

This oligarch, once imprisoned for common crimes, is wily and street smart. He knows enough of the organized corruption that passes itself off as the Russian government to figure out a way to maneuver through this chaos. He seems to enjoy some amount of popularity among Russian troops.

The biggest beneficiary of all the troubles in Russia is obviously Ukraine. The Wagner mutiny is heaven-sent for Kiev as it rolls out its much-anticipated counter-offensive. Russia’s invasion force faced morale problems to begin with. Now the troops in the trenches do not know who they are fighting for.

For the rest of the world, the worry is how these troubles could affect control of Russia’s powerful nuclear force. Putin acts according to his fears. That might make him a lot more predictable than Progozhin the Clown.