It is highly probable that we will never know precisely how or why Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, was killed. It is also highly probable that he was assassinated, most likely on the orders of Vladimir Putin, but possibly on the orders of his enemies in the Russian defence ministry, who had probably been dreaming of this moment for a long time and believed they could finally kill him with impunity.
Most western commentary on the assassination has focused on the fear of Putin that Prigozhin’s death will cause among the Russian elites, or on the underlying fragility it reveals in the Russian regime.
This is not wholly wrong, but it misses several longstanding fears that are widespread within the Russian establishment – and indeed in the wider Russian population – that will influence how events play out: fear of defeat, chaos and of each other. What really worried most members of the elite was Putin’s failure to act much earlier to end the public feud between Prigozhin and the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and that Prigozhin’s armed demonstration risked a catastrophic internal split in Russia, leading to defeat in Ukraine.
The outcome of the war is central to everyone’s thinking. To judge by the recent failures of Ukrainian offensive operations, if the Russian regime and state remain united the Russian army stands a good chance of defending its existing lines. From conversations I’ve had, it appears that a large majority of elite and ordinary Russians would accept a ceasefire along the present battle lines and would not mount any challenge if Putin proposed or agreed to such a ceasefire and presented it as a sufficient Russian victory.
Hardline nationalist elements in the establishment and military would be deeply unhappy; but they have been weakened by Prigozhin’s fall and the accompanying steps that Putin has taken to curb their influence, including the dismissal of two generals and the arrest of the ultra-nationalist leader and former Donbas militia commander Igor Girkin. However, Putin is clearly still afraid of their influence and their continued admiration for Prigozhin; which is doubtless why he made sure that Prigozhin’s funeral was strictly private.
The hardline nationalists’ preferred programme, which is total victory in Ukraine and would entail the complete mobilisation of the population and the economy along the lines of 1942, would be deeply unpopular among most of the population and would pose a mortal threat to the property of the economic elites – which is doubtless why Putin has so far rejected it.
The general elite aversion to pursuing total victory in Ukraine is however not the same thing as a willingness to accept Russian defeat – which is all that the Ukrainian and US governments are presently offering. Nobody with whom I have spoken within the Moscow elite, and very few indeed in the wider population, has said that Russia should surrender Crimea and the eastern Donbas. Unless Russian sovereignty over these territories is formally recognised by Ukraine – something that Kyiv has categorically excluded – the Russians who take this view believe that Russia must hold the additional territory it has taken since last year’s invasion, to head off any future Ukrainian attack on Crimea and the Donbas.
There was no evidence the Russian elite, and indeed regular Russians, wanted the invasion to happen in the first place. That decision was made by Putin and his immediate entourage. But there is still a general unwillingness to see Russia defeated and humiliated in Ukraine. A comparison can be made here with certain US soldiers of my acquaintance, who had not wanted the invasion of Iraq, but who also, once the US military was engaged there, did not want to see it beaten.
This causes a severe dilemma for Russian liberals: how to oppose the war without supporting the Ukrainian side in a war in which Russian soldiers are dying and that threatens Russia with catastrophic defeat. It recalls an interview with John Musgrave, a wounded Vietnam veteran who had become a passionate opponent of the war, but who nonetheless reacted with shock and fury when Jane Fonda travelled to North Vietnam and was photographed with Viet Cong soldiers. Many Russian liberals in the west have essentially taken the Fonda approach of open support for Russia’s enemies. This may be morally correct, but it is extremely unlikely to help them win a future free election in Russia, should one ever happen.
Elite fears of Russian defeat are linked to an ultimate fear of Russian anarchy, which is shared by much of the population at large. They actually agree with some of the toughest anti-Russian elements in the US and eastern Europe: that complete defeat in Ukraine would lead to the fall of the Putin regime and that this in turn could lead to a period of chaos that would gravely weaken or even destroy the Russian Federation.
Fears of a new Time of Troubles have very deep roots in Russian culture and were strongly revived by the disastrous experience of the 1990s. Speaking from the perspective of the smaller business community, the owner of a chain of cafes told me that despite very considerable anger at the corruption of Putin’s cronies, most of the businesspeople of her acquaintance are still loyal to Putin because he ended the mafia extortions and conflicts of the 1990s, which had made running a successful business not just very hard but sometimes fatal.
At the heart of this fear on the part of the elites is a fear of each other, or even one might say of themselves. The chaos of the 1990s included vicious struggles among the so-called oligarchs including, in some cases, murder. It would seem that the elites of today believe that without a strong leader like Putin to keep them in order, they would be unable to mediate their differences and hold the state together.
Despite all these factors favouring Putin’s continuation in power, another severe defeat in Ukraine would very likely doom his regime. Then again, possible rivals to Putin from within the establishment do not need to know the melancholy history of Weimar Germany to realise that a regime that takes power under the shadow of a disastrous defeat is unlikely to be a stable or successful one.
Anatol Lieven is director of the Eurasia programme at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and author of books including Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry