Putin’s Stability Was Always a Myth

During the pro-democracy protests that swept through Moscow in 2011-12, the Kremlin did its best to argue that Russians “shouldn’t rock the boat.” After all, it was argued, President Vladimir Putin had saved Russia from the “wild, chaotic 1990s.” To come out against him was foolish, even ungrateful.

The Kremlin then spent the next decade violently rocking its own ship as it exported war and terror abroad and stamped out democracy at home. The instability of Russia today has come from the top—made by men such as Putin who promised that every bloody deed was in the name of a strong and stable nation.

Then, a bloodthirsty criminal with his own private army of fellow criminals finally marched toward Moscow. And many people were, for some reason, surprised. To be sure, the specifics were hard to predict (though U.S. intelligence seems to have had a good guess.)

To understand what on earth just happened between Putin and corrupt-caterer-turned-warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, we need to realize that Putin’s stability was a myth from the very start.

Putin rode an oil boom and made a lot of key people very rich, while the majority got scraps from the table. Even as average Russians became better off, inequality deepened. Russian officials engaged in corruption on a breathtaking scale and exported it abroad. Overall domestic crime rates did stabilize, which greatly placated an exhausted population, but at the same time financial crime became a way of life for both the ruling elite and middle managers.

Putin doesn’t preside over a government in a way most outsiders would recognize; rather, he presides over a mafia clan that took over the top of an already hollowed-out state. Writers such as Masha Gessen and Mark Galeotti nailed it years ago. A good way to describe this system is the popular Russian phrase po ponyatiyam—wherein a criminal operation is run according to gentlemen’s agreements.

As various Russian journalists have pointed out over the years, Putin believes in ponyatiya, the criminal’s code of laws. It’s how he persuaded the Russian elites to retain loyalty to him as they enriched themselves, and he expected Western leaders to come to a similar understanding with him after he annexed Crimea and destabilized the Ukrainian Donbas region in 2014. The fact that Western governments aren’t run like the mafia proved a major stumbling block for him, and his resentment of the West continued to grow. Yet on the other hand, Western governments also did not show enough strength and force in opposing Putin in 2014, which made the eventual mass-scale invasion of Ukraine possible. A cerebral, enlightened approach to a thuggish Putin simply could not and did not work.

When you think of Putin as a mob boss with other thugs in his employ, Prigozhin’s attempted insurrection makes much more sense. The Russian Ministry of Defense, a.k.a. another group of criminals under Putin’s control, was trying to take over Prigozhin’s private military company and cash cow the Wagner Group, using the invasion as an excuse. Prigozhin felt threatened by his rivals. Inevitably, he lashed out.

In the ensuing drama, a number of Russian servicemen were killed by Prigozhin’s forces. Their lives don’t matter to Putin, so Prigozhin was given a way out, apparently to Belarus—though much remains to be seen. Imagine how demoralizing this must be to Russia’s remaining troops, however.

But even with the insurrection stopped, Putin’s credibility is shot. He went from branding Prigozhin a dangerous traitor to letting him immediately escape. He acts very brave when it comes to jailing unarmed people waving peace signs, not so brave when an armed insurrectionist and his merry band of war criminals start rolling toward Moscow.

Ordinary Russians didn’t exactly rally around Putin during a day of crisis. Prigozhin’s forces essentially took over Rostov-on-Don—not some backwater town, mind you, but a city of more than a million people. And when Wagner forces were leaving, Prigozhin was treated like a rockstar, not a despised traitor, by onlookers. Government military forces, meanwhile—such as the much talked-up Chechen troops—mostly seem to have avoided major involvement in the conflict, or sat on the fence.

That’s because an aging autocrat such as Putin inspires, at best, passive support. Also because people who have spent decades living under a calcifying regime crave excitement. It’s not that Prigozhin is a good person; it’s that he’s someone different.

All this suggests Prigozhin’s insurrection is a preamble to greater instability in Russia. Putin’s war on Ukraine has claimed tens of thousands of lives but achieved no tangible aims. Sanctions continue to grind at the Russian economy. The sons of wealthy officials don’t have to worry about being drafted, while others lose their children and fathers.

Even Putin’s most loyal propagandists, such as the odious Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state broadcaster RT, are having a hard time explaining to people why everything is just fine, essentially declaring “laws don’t matter” in the wake of Prigozhin’s exit.

The boat is now rocking of its own accord. Exporting violence for years can have a boomerang effect. And violence inspires more violence. It becomes a cycle.

The dramatic start of Prigozhin’s new arc was a video he released in May. In it, Prigozhin stood in front of rows of bloody corpses, apparently those of Wagner mercenaries, screaming obscenities at Russian military officials and demanding more ammunition as he accused the Russian Ministry of Defense of deliberately undermining Wagner.

This was the first starkly clear indication that Prigozhin was up to something. And while no one can doubt Prigozhin’s self-serving cynicism, it’s also true that a barbaric war changes people, and makes them angry and desperate.

It’s one thing to engage in violence when you are protecting what you love, as the Ukrainians are doing. It’s another thing to grind away with no clear goal, while officials higher up the food chain, such as the ones Prigozhin despises, scheme to take away your money and power by integrating your fighters into a system they control. In that scenario, a rabid dog of war may very well snap at its owner.

Criminals who go unpunished tend to escalate. Putin got away with violence and corruption for years, so he finally felt untouchable enough to launch a genocidal war of aggression. Yet the same can be said of the men whom Putin controls. They too have escalated, and they are up to their elbows in blood. Why shouldn’t they go from murdering Ukrainians to murdering fellow Russians, especially if the latter inconvenience them?

None of this is good news for the stability of the Russian regime down the road. To quote Ukraine’s chief of military intelligence, “It will get worse.”