WSWS INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL BOARD (Statement)
A coup attempt led by Evgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the Russian Wagner mercenary force, collapsed in the evening hours of Saturday, local time. In an agreement brokered by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin has left Russia, and the Russian Secret Service (FSB) has dropped the mutiny investigation initiated earlier in the day against the Wagner leader. There are unconfirmed reports that the deal includes the removal of Defense Minister Shoigu and the chairman of the chief-of-staff, Valery Gerasimov, and the relocation of Wagner to Africa.
Prigozhin started his coup on Friday evening, local time, with a 30-minute video in which he ranted against Russia’s military leadership and made a direct appeal to the pro-NATO faction within the Russian ruling class. Prigozhin, who only a few weeks ago called for a mass mobilization and a full turn to a war economy in order to combat the threat from NATO, now claimed, “The Armed Forces of Ukraine were not going to attack Russia with NATO.”
On Saturday morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on television and accused Prigozhin, but without mentioning him by name, of acting on behalf of NATO. Putin stated, “Today, Russia is waging a tough struggle for its future, repelling the aggression of neo-Nazis and their patrons. The entire military, economic and informational machine of the West is directed against us.”
Later Saturday evening, with Wagner troops having taken over Rostov-on-Don and on the outskirts of Moscow, Prigozhin announced that they would retreat. His sudden retreat clearly indicates that the level of support he was counting on for a successful coup failed to materialize.
What led Prigozhin to launch his coup? First, it is evident that his escalating conflicts with the Russian state and military apparatus came to a head. The coup attempt was preceded by Prigozhin’s vitriolic denunciations of Defense Minister Shoigu, whom he accused of not waging the war aggressively enough. It has been reported that funding for Wagner was to be substantially cut. Earlier this month, Prigozhin refused to accept Putin’s demand that Wagner be placed under the control of the army leadership.
There is evidence that the military was fed up with Putin’s long-time patronage of this foul-mouthed and disrespectful (to the military) thug. His operations in Ukraine, while useful to a limited extent, also interfered with the professional conduct of the war by trained officers. Prigozhin, one can safely surmise, attempted the coup in order to preempt actions against him.
Second, it would be the height of political cluelessness to believe that NATO has been a passive bystander in the events of the last 24 to 36 hours. It has certainly been following the escalating war of words between Prigozhin and the Russian military with extreme care, and it can be assumed that it made contact with him. There is no other credible explanation for the pro-NATO justification made by Prigozhin upon launching the coup.
Prigozhin’s NATO contacts would have had a good reason to demand that he act now. The coup has been launched less than three weeks into the NATO-backed counter-offensive by Ukraine. Having cost tens of billions of dollars to prepare, it has so far proven to be a debacle, with thousands of Ukrainian soldiers dying each day and only a few villages seized. In just over two weeks, NATO will be holding a major summit in Vilnius that, until the coup attempt, threatened to be dominated by Ukraine’s military debacle.
The Biden administration and its NATO allies calculated that a coup attempt, even if not successful, would destabilize the regime and undermine its military operations. In any case, the coup attempt has shifted the media narrative away from the failed Ukrainian counter-offensive to the failing Putin regime.
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