The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

HOW do autocrats fall from power? One way is through death or physical incapacitation. Another is if they begin to believe the misapprehension that if they loosened their iron grip on their countries, their populations would respond with gratitude, relief and more dedicated support for their respective regimes.

The first is beyond the control of even the most powerful tyrant. The second has only seldom produced positive results for the dictator.

A third way to slip from the throne is to project weakness, suggesting to would-be rebels and potential replacements that the time is right for ramping up dissent to the level of overt resistance and active rebellion.

If the Western press is to be believed – and we should do so with caution – this latter is the situation and choice facing Russian president Vladimir Putin this week and beyond.

The catalyst for all this speculation was the very short-lived revolt staged by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercurial leader of a group of mercenaries calling themselves the Wagner Group, the name apparently derived from the inspiring influence on German armies of the famous composer.

What is this shadowy group of mercenaries? It has become a reliable component of Russia’s strategy in Ukraine, with Wagner forces being used to hold cities like Bakhmut. Prigozhin had sharply criticized Russian military leaders for weeks, calling the top civilian and military commanders incompetent to the point of being traitorous.

The resulting tension between Russia’s defense ministry and Wagner escalated dramatically last week, when Prigozhin said that Russian forces had attacked Wagner camps in eastern Ukraine, killing dozens of his men. Late Friday, Prigozhin issued videotaped remarks that seemed to vaguely call for a rebellion against Russian military leadership.

Such private military groups aren’t uncommon in today’s world. The United States has used private military companies during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, there are differences between the commonly accepted definition of a PMC and Russia’s version of the companies.

“In NATO countries, in Western countries, the main logic behind using private contractors when it comes to security and defense policy has been the flexibility of resources,” said Dr. András Rácz, a Russian expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations. He spoke to CBS News. “However, on the Russian side, the logic has been different. Russia, from the beginning, perceived these companies as a way of exerting state power in a covert way,” he continued.

While the logic underlying the employment by Russia and the West of respective PMCs may be different, the results often look disturbingly similar. Wagner has been active for years in Syria, a noted arena for Russian oversees adventurism, as well as in several countries in Africa where Putin’s “security assistance” has succeeded in gaining support in international fora such as the United Nations.

One effect of this persistent diplomatic and paramilitary offensive by Moscow is to be found in the large number of Africa nations that have remained “neutral” in the ongoing Ukraine War despite the fact that for many of them, the war’s impact on their food supply has been significant and damaging.

Overall, Wagner has been charged with corruption and wartime atrocities in every nation where its forces have been deployed.

But that was also true of such American-sponsored PMCs as Blackwater, whose nefarious actions in Iraq and Afghanistan became truly infamous and sapped popular support in the US for the lengthy American involvement in those two volatile nations.

As for Prigozhin himself, he is part of a group of supremely opportunistic entrepreneurs who amassed stupendously large fortunes in the chaotic years after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

He reportedly got involved in the retail food business by selling hot dogs in Putin’s home town of St Petersburg. This progressed to active involvement in super markets there and elsewhere in Russia during the ill-fated but well-intentioned Russian experiment with democracy under Boris Yeltsin and others.

Also in the roaring 1990s, Prigozhin became involved in the gambling business. He served as CEO of a group that founded the first casinos in Saint Petersburg. This group started many other businesses together throughout the 1990s in various sectors including construction, marketing research, and foreign trade. This may have been when Prigozhin met Putin for the first time, since Putin was at the same time the chairman of the local supervisory board for casinos and gambling.

Progozhin is also a master media manipulator. A Russia analyst in Washington, DC, told reporters that “while Putin and his propagandists have been dominating the Russian television and traditional outlets, Prigozhin is innovative because he had weaponised a network of military correspondents and bloggers”.

Incidentally, Prigozhin is also wanted by the FBI for “Conspiracy to Defraud the United States.” The FBI agency has offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to Prigozhin’s arrest for allegedly overseeing the political and electoral interference of the Florida-based Internet Research Agency from 2014 to 2018. The FBI has charged that this agency worked to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

This morning, Putin remains at the helm of Russia, and he also still has extralegal means at his disposal — assassinations, manufactured criminal charges that result in lengthy prison sentences, and rigged elections that suppress dissent.

Putin certainly appears to control the popular media, the financial sector, and a military that, while unmasked as wobbly and severely depleted by the war in Ukraine, seems to remain loyal to the Kremlin.

Still, the once-mutinous Wagner forces took over the key southern Russian headquarters city of Rostov-on-Don without a shot being fired. They were able to march unopposed to within around 120 miles of Moscow.

Initially, Putin had vowed to punish those behind the armed uprising led by his onetime ally Prigozhin. In a televised speech to the nation, he called the rebellion a “betrayal” and “treason”.

Russia’s security service reportedly opened a criminal case against Prigozhin for armed mutiny and had said that his statements were “calls for the start of an armed civil conflict on Russian territory and his actions a ‘stab in the back’ to Russian servicemen fighting pro-fascist Ukrainian forces”.

The Kremlin propaganda machine moved into high gear, saying “we urge the Wagner fighters not to make irreparable mistakes, to stop any forcible actions against the Russian people, not to carry out the criminal and traitorous orders of Prigozhin, to take measures to detain him”.

“Excessive ambitions and vested interests have led to treason,” Putin said in a televised address.

“It is a blow to Russia, to our people. And our actions to defend the Fatherland against such a threat will be harsh.”

“All those who deliberately stepped on the path of betrayal, who prepared an armed insurrection, who took the path of blackmail and terrorist methods, will suffer inevitable punishment, will answer both to the law and to our people.”

Then, suddenly, over the weekend Prigozhin called off the mutiny and took refuge in Belarus, whose longtime dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko had reportedly brokered a cease-fire deal.

In allowing Prigozhin and his forces to go free, a Russian spokesman said, Putin’s “highest goal” was “to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results”.

Charges against Prigozhin of mounting an armed rebellion would be dropped.

The Russian government also said it would not prosecute Wagner fighters who took part, while those who did not join in were to be offered contracts by the Defense Ministry. Prigozhin ordered his troops back to their field camps in Ukraine, where they have been fighting alongside Russian regular soldiers.

What now? Writing Tuesday in the New York Times, the illustrious prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman offered some sage advice: “In the near-term, if Putin were to be ousted, we could well end up with someone worse. For example, how would we feel if Prigozhin were in the Kremlin this morning, commanding Russia’s nuclear arsenal?”

Friedman continued with his gloomy speculation. “You could also get disorder or civil war and the crackup of Russia into warlord/oligarch fiefdoms. As much as I detest Putin, I detest disorder even more, because when a big state cracks apart it is very hard to put it back together. The nuclear weapons and criminality that could spill out of a disintegrated Russia would change the world.”

For Washington. London and Brussels policymakers, the options are unappealing, uncertain and downright scary.