You can guess, dear reader: today, we dive into what happened in Russia over the weekend. Enjoy our analysis!

Russian Roulette: Wagner’s (aborted) Ride of the Valkyries

In the saga of Game of Thrones, Tyrion of House Lannister strikes a deal with Bronn the mercenary: should anyone ever try to convince you with money of the need to kill me, you come to me. Here, always, you will find double the first offer. For years, at least until yesterday, the relationship between Vladimir Putin and Evgenij Prigozhin was more or less like this. But when the stakes soar, there comes the point when offering double is no longer enough because everything you ever dreamed of appears within reach. So, what to raise with?

There are still too many mysteries of the abortive march on Moscow, promised and then abandoned by the St Petersburg ogre. Nor is there any guarantee that they will be revealed sooner or later. But to try to understand the series of incredible events that have taken place over the last weekend, it is necessary to turn back the hands of many months.

It is November 2022 when a US intelligence source admits to CNN the existence of a ‘House of Cards but in the Kremlin’scenario, a situation in which ‘everyone stabs each other in the back’. Yet it was already a month earlier, in October of the same year, that the meeting that perhaps irrevocably changed the relationship between Evegenij Prigozhin and Vladimir Putin took place.

In that meeting, the head of Wagner dares to complain in the president’s presence about the mismanagement of the war in Ukraine. To his most famous compatriot, he rebukes the long chain of mistakes made on the battlefield and the wrongs he claims to have suffered at the hands of the military leadership. If he can go that far, it is because of the importance Putin himself has given him over the years: more and more money, more and more honours.

It is widely believed that the sharp turn of events began irretrievably on 10 June. This is the day the Russian Ministry of Defence orders the volunteer regiments to sign exclusive contracts with the government. No one mentions Wagner explicitly, but the attempt to incorporate the group into the Armed Forces, thus depriving Prigozhin of his own creature, is apparent—a game of levers of power.

Five days later, the White House is urgently informed by the 007 that the mercenary leader is planning armed action against the Russian defence establishment. Putin himself is made aware of the threat posed by Prigozhin by his agents, at least in the run-up to the mutiny. It is also for this reason that Washington does not understand that the reaction of Putin and the apparatuses loyal to him is so slow and cumbersome that the rebellion’s chances of success increase by the hour.

President Biden then postpones his departure for Camp David. Mark Milley, Chief of Staff of the US Army, cancels a long-planned trip to Israel. And National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also postpones his mission to Europe. The ‘war council’ must be convened. And the fact that the director of the CIA, Bill Burns, is present indicates how sensitive the matter is.

Faced with the concrete hypothesis of a ‘civil war’ in Russia, the posture assumed by Washington is one of prudence. The Wagner soldiers are outnumbered but superior in professionalism and skills compared to most of Moscow’s regular army. And then the question arises as to why such a bold move. Two hypotheses remain: Prigozhin is desperate or knows something others ignore. For example, people in and around Moscow are ready to come to his side.

With so many unknowns, while the free world is rooting for a showdown between evils, Washington is concerned. It is natural to focus on the risks attached to a potential changing of the guard, including those associated with control of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, for there is a subtle but substantial difference between Putin’s defeat and Russian collapse.

The options at that point are few. But the first rule to be established is to refrain from indulging in anything more than ‘low profile’ communication. The dreaded risk is that Putin will take advantage of the slightest blunder to tell at home the false plot of a ‘coloured revolution’ orchestrated by the evil West to compact the front around his figure. Here, too, is an important aspect. At a time when people in the West are wondering why the people of Moscow are not taking to the streets to give Putin the final push, the real point to be made is the opposite: why are the demonstrations of support for the president so few?

When the Belarusian president’s press service announced the resolution of the crisis with an agreement brokered by Lukashenko himself, the Wagner convoys were precisely 330 km from Moscow. According to experts at the Institute for the Study of War, had he really wanted to, Prigozhin could have gone as far as the outskirts of Moscow. How Lukashenko persuaded him to desist, starts to emerge. Vadim Gigin, a pro-regime Belarusian analyst, comments that the phone call was vulgar, harsh, and manly. Yet the mere fact that it took the intervention of a foreign leader to avert the bloodbath in the capital deeply undermines Putin’s power. What kind of leader is unable to protect his people? A legitimate question, were it not that from this one comes another: will Putin, as of today, at least be able to defend himself?

On Monday evening, Putin delivered a brief TV address, condemning the Wagner Group’s mutiny and saying Evgenij Prigozhin’s mercenaries would have to either swear allegiance to their country or leave for Belarus. The warlord himself had resurfaced the same day on Telegram to issue an impassioned defence of his mutiny against Russia’s army chiefs, specifying that dethroning Putin was not on the agenda. The comedy could go on for months without changing the plot’s core. By agreeing to give up his all-in, Prigozhin may have thrown away the only possibility of replacing Putin or destabilising his inner circle. But with his gamble, he has also irreparably damaged the aura of invincibility that the Russian president still enjoyed mainly at home. External and internal enemies were spectators to an unexpected test of fragility. The fact that Putin promised in the morning ‘inevitable punishment’ for the traitors, only to accept Lukashenko’s mediation in the evening, proves how weak he was in the advance towards Moscow.

Meantime, popcorn stocks in Ukraine are reaching an all-time low.