Putin’s Strongman Image Suddenly Unravels for Russians

On Saturday morning, Russians watched a rattled and angry President Vladimir Putin deliver an emergency address to the nation. Wagner Group’s mutinous mercenaries had just taken control of Rostov-on-Don, one of Russia’s largest cities, without encountering resistance from Russian ground forces, security services, police, or any other state authority. Without mentioning Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin by name, Putin promised swift and decisive retribution for the “knife in the back.” Prigozhin had thrown down the gauntlet, and Putin picked it up for every Russian to see.

Putin’s resolve lasted less than a day. As the battle-hardened insurrectionists were approaching Moscow, meeting minimal resistance while Putin’s depleted forces were preparing defenses in the capital, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov announced a complete reversal. There would be no treason charges against Prigozhin, the Wagner leader exiled to Belarus, and the insurrectionists allowed to retreat without retribution. State propaganda attempted to spin it as a generous act to avoid bloodshed, but at this point even some of Putin’s staunchest loyalists began questioning his sudden U-turn.

Until this weekend, Putin’s modus operandi for holding power has been to dissociate himself from bad news by letting his underlings absorb the public’s anger and fight it out among themselves. That was his strategy during the pandemic, for example, when he went into isolation and devolved most of the responsibility for dealing with the crisis to local authorities. Throughout the Russian war against Ukraine, Putin has acted in a similar way by forcing his top generals to announce unpopular decisions, such as the humiliating retreats in Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts last year—as if it is their war, not his. This is how Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu quickly became one of the most hated figures in pro-war and nationalist circles, who blame him for not executing the war brutally enough. Prigozhin capitalized on that, constantly attacking the military command in incendiary speeches while Putin himself largely stayed out of the debate. There were some comments about Putin’s leadership and even the occasional call for his resignation on pro-war Telegram channels, but the vast majority of criticism was directed at those below.

Up until Wagner’s mutiny, Putin still broadly enjoyed the image of a clever, manipulating strongman who skillfully hedges his bets and avoids scrutiny. That image collapsed this weekend when Prigozhin forced Putin’s hand. Even if Prigozhin insisted he was not trying to overthrow the government and only targeting Russia’s defense establishment, the president sitting it out in a bunker and letting underlings fight was no longer tenable when one of those underlings was leading a mercenary army toward Moscow and shooting down the Russian Air Force’s aircraft along the way.

But when Putin finally came out publicly with his threat to crush the rebellion, that threat was almost immediately proved to be empty. Neither the Russian military, nor the secret services, nor any other authority took it upon itself to implement Putin’s order. To many Russians, it looked as though Putin was commanding imaginary armies. Just as badly, hardly any Russians of note publicly supported their leader—during those hours between Putin’s threat and its revocation, it was as if they were waiting to see where the chips would fall.

Putin’s trademark indecision in the face of crisis—which in the past helped him avoid blame for policies gone wrong—suddenly turned out to be his tragic flaw.

For the first time, Russians see Putin alone in the spotlight with no one to devolve responsibility to and only himself to blame for the mess. It was he who allowed Prigozhin to flourish as an unaccountable agent with his own business empire, internet troll factories, and increasingly powerful mercenary army. It was Putin who let the conflict between Wagner and the Russian Defense Ministry fester and finally come to a head. And now it was he who reneged on his promise to crush the rebellion by force.

Making Putin’s about-face look particularly weak was the fact that Wagner’s rebellion wasn’t just a bloodless political ploy. On their way to Moscow, the mercenaries reportedly downed seven Russian Air Force aircraft, killing more than 10 pilots and crew. The way it was all quickly swept under the rug and forgiven puzzled and angered many Russians, including many of those who previously praised Wagner’s military prowess and criticism of the Defense Ministry on their pro-war Telegram channels. Putin’s uncharacteristically brief follow-up speech late Monday night, in which he confirmed that Wagner’s fighters would face no repercussions for the attempted mutiny and thanked the group’s commanders for avoiding “fratricidal bloodshed,” did nothing to alleviate many Russians’ anxieties over their leader’s loss of control.

The rebellion has also energized the far-right, extreme pro-war opposition to Putin. Previously, it was a diverse, squabbling group of bloggers and former mercenaries, only some of whom were openly anti-Putin. But since the rebellion, the movement is coalescing along explicitly anti-Putin lines, their anger and disappointment palpable. “I haven’t seen anything more pitiful in the performance of a man remotely resembling the president,” Igor Girkin, the former mercenary convicted in absentia last year by a Dutch court for his role in downing Flight MH17 in 2014, wrote on his Telegram channel yesterday. Vladislav Pozdnyakov, a militant nationalist and enthusiastic Ukraine war booster, wrote on his Telegram channel: “It’s now a fact that Putin lives in a fantasy world, completely untethered from reality.”

The Angry Patriots Club, a far-right nationalist group that calls itself “the only real opposition to the authorities,” has taken up Prigozhin’s critique of poor leadership and government corruption under Putin and Shoigu as the reason for Russia’s difficulties in the war in Ukraine. At a meeting attended by Girkin and others on Monday, the group proclaimed it would challenge any weakening of the war effort by the Kremlin. That is no empty threat: The movement claimed that it can mobilize 10 to 15 million Russian voters, making it a force in the 2024 Russian presidential election—a highly manipulated piece of political performance, but one that still bears a residual risk to the regime.

It’s also remarkable how many Russians—even in the power elite—stayed on the sidelines until it was clear who’d win. This is completely new: In the past, the loyalists would invariably trip over themselves trying to prove their devotion to the leader and denounce his enemies. One prominent example is Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of state propaganda channel RT, who managed to combine vocal and uncompromising support for Putin with generous praise for Prigozhin and Wagner. She maintained radio silence until late Sunday night, long after the fight had been decided, before coming out with a clear endorsement of Putin.

Similarly muted was Sergey Mironov, leader of the pro-Putin center-left A Just Russia-For Truth party, who previously posed in Wagner merchandise and proudly displayed a sledgehammer personally signed by Prigozhin, alluding to the group’s brutal executions of deserters. Mironov did not condemn the insurrection until shortly before Peskov announced the truce. No prominent oligarchs and few other figures came out in support of Putin during the insurrection. Ordinary Russians, meanwhile, appeared almost entirely apathetic.

Putin’s trademark indecision and procrastination in the face of crisis—which in the past helped him avoid blame for policies gone wrong—suddenly turned out to be his tragic flaw. In allowing the rebellion to fester and grow, then failing to follow up on his promise to crush it, he exposed himself as wobbly and weak. The worst thing for a strongman is to lose his image of strength, and this is exactly what happened this weekend. Even the power base of his regime—the security services—has been lukewarm in supporting its leader. Unusually for a quasi-dictatorship and police state like Russia, there have been no mass retributions, no rounding up of participants and their sympathizers. It seems that even the security services no longer see Putin as a ruthless top dog. His image is quickly crumbling among Russians, and that may yet unravel his rule.