Real or not, the Wagner Group rebellion has shown that, although it desperately fashions itself as a new type of dictatorship, Putin’s regime is just another political construct lacking any real foundation. Patterned on the principles of organized crime groups, which to a large extent have been governing the activity of special services in Russia and beyond, Putin’s regime is a band of clans united by fear and their brotherhood in crime.
Incapable of producing modern state institutions, autonomous political movements or “national” ideologies, the regime is forced to exclusively rely on the president’s persona. In fact, the constant references to Putin’s “political prowess, strength and intelligence” are a substitute for national ideology. The only unchanging elements are the significant amounts of hatred and contempt for everything and everyone who stands against the Russian president, which the Russian propaganda injects into the Russian public, despite all facts and against any decent amount of intellectual decency. The permanent reference to a counterfeit imperial past, the relentless promotion of an obsessive nostalgia for the “Soviet fatherland”, with its underlying iconography, are all designed to hide the disturbing truth from those who still believe in Putin, namely that this entire system is centered on his persona. Despite the publicly stated goal of fashioning a specific political system for Russia, reflecting its historical experience and the collective and paternalistic aspirations of the majority, Putin “merely” managed to build a bureaucratic dictatorship of a rather “classical” strand which, once it has collapsed, will leave behind only chaos and traces of its crimes.
Pro-war Russian extremists, a far more serious threat to Putin’s power and reputation than the democratic opposition
Prigozhin’s candid performance, observing the most conservative stagecraft of the prison underworld, has desecrated the president’s persona. Prior to the growling of the Wagner Group boss, which kept with the tone and taxonomy specific to the general population of Russia’s max-security prison system, which Prigozhin himself identifies with as a former inmate, no one had dared challenge the “unerring Putin” in public. The evolution of the war and the instability of not just the army command, but also troop organizing strategies, to say nothing of the training and endowment of Russian servicemen, have prompted many figures the regime relies on, at least in theory, to turn critical, albeit only in the alleged privacy of their lavish homes. Regardless of the original objectives of those who staged this mutiny, Prigozhin did succeed in releasing critical energies built up in reaction to Russia’s humiliating defeats in this war. In the absence of democratic opposition, which today is represented only by Alexei Navalny, critical pressure is exerted on Putin’s regime by various extremist groups, bound by an even harsher strand of the racist National-Bolshevism cultivated by the Kremlin.
Those concerned are not just Igor Girkin (Strelkov) and his “Angry Patriots Club” – Girkin is the former “minister” of war of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk” and the man responsible for the downing of MH17 civilian aircraft. The so-called “war correspondents”, who are nothing but PR experts embedded with various military groups fighting on the Russian-Ukrainian front, have developed genuine movements around them. Vladlen Tatarsky, who was killed after his own bust exploded in his hand during a public event, or “novelist” Zakhar Prilepin, himself wounded in a car bombing, are two of the more resounding names, without mentioning the tragic “mascot” of Russia’s imperial fixations, Daria Dugina, herself killed in an unclaimed attack.
Adding to this picture is a series of Telegram channels, which totals millions of subscribers and which are administered by “Z correspondents”, tasked with fueling and amplifying Russian’s fighting spirit by feeding them “positive” (reading fake) news about the frontline published by Kremlin-backed publications. Prior to the clever show staged by Wagner, channels such as “Rybar”, “Operation Z – War Correspondents of the Russian Spring” (which is what the breakaway movement of Russians in southeastern Ukraine calls itself in Russian propaganda circles), “Colonelcassad”, “Grey Zone”, “Zapiski Veterana” and others have kept Putin’s name out of critical pieces, shifting the blame for the defeats of the Russian army to various figures of secondary importance. Rostov’s occupation at the hands of Prigozhin’s band of mercenaries liberated “Z correspondents” of all restraints. For the first time since the beginning of the war, Putin’s statements were commented in a way where irony was mixed with disappointment for the results expected from, yet undelivered by, Russia’s “supreme commander”. Obviously, Prigozhin enacted a political media stunt, a fact confirmed by the subsequent June 29 meeting of Prigozhin and Putin, accompanied by the Wagner top brass. However, the effects of this bizarre circus show on the “Z community” are very real and not at all refreshing for the Kremlin.
The chinks in Putin’s armor: messages that don’t reflect official rhetoric promoted by pro-Kremlin media
Shortly after the masquerade of the regime’s cruelty and absolute control started to dissipate, a great deal of Putin’s followers started to seriously think about the post-Putin era. A near-monolithic sector after the ban introduced against genuine or faked opposition media such as Meduza, Novaya Gazeta or Ekho Moskvy, the “sanctioned” media outlets started squeezing in more and more critical messages. On July 9, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a publication which was all but silenced after criticizing the annexation of Crimea by subjecting his owner to explicit pressure, published an article titled “Putin is feeding on positive news”, which provided an ironic analysis of the optimistic statements of various Russian officials on the sidelines of meetings with the Kremlin leader. Reporting on the televised media stunt of Putin’s reception of the Stavropol regional governor, the man who “coordinates” the People’s Republic of Luhansk on Russia’s behalf, Nezavisimaya Gazeta did not refrain from writing that the critical underfunding from Kyiv authorities cannot be the reason behind the disastrous economic state of this region, which Russia has been administering for years, all the more so as Luhansk had been under Russia’s de facto control even when under Ukraine’s de jure authority.
A few days before that, on June 25, marking Beria’s arrest in the summer of 1953, the same publication carried a story not about “Beria’s crimes”, which is how Putin’s propaganda wanted to depict Beria with a view to neutralizing Stalin’s reputation, but rather about the reforms Beria had undertaken over a short period, March-June 1953, while at the helm of the USSR. Among other things, the article reproduced a memo Beria submitted to the leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where he called for the immediate suspension of the Russification of Western Ukraine, arguing that over 1944-1952, over 500 thousand Ukrainians from the western territories of this republic were subjected to various forms of oppression (134 thousand were arrested, 153 thousand were killed and 203 thousand were deported to the far depths of Russia). Such an article, obviously at odds with the regime’s official myths which denied repression and Russification in Ukraine in the Soviet era, was an implicit call to reason, a shy attempt at restoring the truth.
On a less dramatic yet no less bold tone, Kommersant published a photo montage, also on July 9, headlining “Courage leads from sin to crucifixion”. The article marked the anniversary of a popular actress in the Soviet era, Lia Ahedjakova. Featuring snapshots from her various performances and films, as well as a photo of herself and Putin, the photo collage also included a number of pictures of the actress participating in the 2013 anti-government protests or attending the 2018 signing of the petitions in defense of civil militant Oyub Titiev and filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov. Considering that all plays featuring Lia Ahedjakova were immediately cancelled, usually “due to technical issues” shortly after the start of the war, the celebration of her anniversary by Kommersant, a publication desperately trying to serve both the regime as well as the truth, which is an otherwise impossible endeavor, seems a genuine anti-establishment gesture.
Putin has become an old and wavering dictator, concerned only with his private security
Currently having to deal with the frustrations of the core of his supporters, Putin is more concerned about mitigating the damage to their image. The obvious attempt of the Saint Petersburg police to prevent a public conference announced by Girkin, invoking an alleged bomb threat concerning that particular conference room, proves that the regime is more afraid of criticism from “Z audiences”. As usual, the effect will not be what Putin expects. After the fairly desperate calls for “closing ranks around the president”, with a view to avoiding a defeat in the war the Kremlin pretends to be fighting against the West, Putin’s meeting with Prigozhin, the latter “exiled” to Belarus, most certainly confirmed that the real purpose of the Wagner “insurrection” was to curtail public support for the outspoken man called “Putin’s chef”. This also explains the surge in Putin’s public appearances, the Russian president having virtually entered full campaign mode. What PR “architects” fail to understand is that the frustrations and concerns of the elites underlying the Russian administration are here to stay and are bound to take deeper root. Putin is no longer the warrantor of stability, but the main source of uncertainty. His decision to equip the Red Guard under Zolotov’s command with tanks and heavy weaponry proves the Kremlin leader expects this regiment to defend him, including against his own military. Russia’s predictable economic difficulties, the inflation and the budget deficit, which will bear down on the Russian common folk, will not make the regime any more popular.
In the foreseeable future, Putin’s Kremlin must deal with an insolvable dilemma. The temporary consolidation of Putin’s position will most definitely consist of a few decisions meant to prove Putin is still in control of Russia. And at least one of these decisions will be tied to the conflict between various factions around him, fighting for influence and resources. On the one hand, the return of members of the “family”, relatives and protégés of the former president Boris Yeltsin, to Putin’s inner circle, as well as the risky meeting with Prigozhin and his lieutenants, both show that the old dictator has already taken steps to dislodge Shoigu’s faction in favor of groups controlled by Naryshin and Zolotov. On the other hand, Putin is forced to prevent any attempt at reinforcing the reputation of the army, which proved it is unwilling to defend the president in a prospective civil war, and this will have long-lasting effects on the army’s performance in theatres of operations in Ukraine. No matter who is actually overseeing military operations, for the time being Gerasimov will remain Chief of General Staff, and at the same time the go-to culprit in the event of Russia’s military failures. Those who seconded Gerasimov’s decisions, people like Mizintsev or Surovikin, were nothing but puppets meant to announce decisions Putin did not want his name associated with, as well as to ensure the interaction between the regular army and Prigozhin’s mercenary outfit. By supporting the Bakhmut massacre, the latter enabled the army to mine the border areas and provide basic training to its conscripts. For the sake of his personal safety and the preservation of his role as a supreme mediator of Russia’s bureaucratic wars, Putin finds himself performing a juggling act on several fronts in order to delay the inevitable, and a call to violence might seem inevitable if the Kremlin leader is to get a hold of the situation. However, Putin has lost the aura of a ruthless tyrant, and is instead seen as an old and wavering dictator, concerned only with his private security. That’s the first and perhaps the most important step to his downfall.
