In the more than two decades of his rule, Vladimir Putin transformed Russia into a state of secret services and organs of violence. He regularly responded to internal challenges by strengthening them in terms of personnel and expanding their powers. But the domestic secret service FSB apparently did not see the armed uprising by Yevgeny Prigozhin and several thousand of his fighters, for the preparation of which there must have been signs given its magnitude – or did not want to see it.
And as the motorcades of Prigozhin’s men moved toward Moscow on Saturday, the security forces were surprisingly passive. There were no signs of serious efforts to stop the fighters. Faced with the greatest threat to Putin’s rule yet, its mainstays have proved unable or unwilling to decisively counter it.
Putin may have averted the threat from Prigozhin. The mercenary leader must now be careful not to fall out of a window, get under a truck or eat or drink something extremely intolerable. Dangerous times are also dawning for his companions and actual or suspected sympathizers. But Putin cannot use such methods to eliminate the weakness that became visible to everyone over the weekend.
More than a failed coup attempt
What happened in Russia over the weekend is more than a failed coup attempt. Because what was visible was not only the failure of the main pillars of Putin’s rule, but also that of his method of exercising power. Before it escalated, the conflict between Prigozhin and Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu was not an industrial accident, but part of the system that Putin created. In and around the Kremlin there have always been competing clans fighting to the death. In this constant struggle for the best seat at court, for power and access to state sinecures, Putin acts as the supreme arbiter.
Sometimes he lets the one, sometimes the other, as long as they remain loyal to him personally. He often even appeared to encourage such disputes in order to maintain a precarious balance. Two factors hold this construction together: the legitimacy that Putin derives from the presidential elections and his real popularity among a significant part of the population, and the common interest of everyone in the ruling class in preserving the existing conditions.
These were very lucrative for the elites because in return for their loyalty to Putin they were given a license to enrich themselves. With the attack on Ukraine, Putin has damaged this fundamental element of his regime: its profiteers have lost access to the wealth they have stashed away in the West – and at the same time there is less to distribute in Russia as a result of the sanctions. Now his reputation as a strongman, which was decisive for his reputation both among the elite and among the general public, has also been battered. All he has left is his unscrupulous willingness to use violence.
