Anna Applebaum: Russia's slide into civil war

Russia slides into civil war:

Is Vladimir facing his Tsar Nicholas II moment?

Anna Applebaum / text

Wang Liqiu / Translated

Anne Applebaum, “Russia Slides Into Civil War,” The Atlantic, June 24, 2023, 6”26 AM ET, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/06/russia-civil-war-wagner -putin-coup/674517/ . The translation is only for academic communication, please do not use it for other purposes.

The Hall of Mirrors that Vladimir built around himself and in the country was so complex and so multi-layered that on the eve of the actual Russian rebellion, I doubted that the Vladimir himself believed it to be true.

Of course, less than a day before this mutiny started, the rest of us did not know the real motives of its main participants, especially the core figure Prigozin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group. Prigozin's fighters have been involved in brutal conflicts across Africa and the Middle East, including Syria, Sudan, Libya, and the Central African Republic. He claims that 25,000 of his soldiers are fighting in Ukraine. In a statement on Friday afternoon, he accused Russian forces of bombing his base, killing "a large number" of his mercenaries. He then called for an armed rebellion, vowing to overthrow the Russian military leader.

For the past few weeks [1] , Prigozin has been insulting the Russian military leadership. He mocked the Russian Defense Minister Shoigu for being lazy and said that the chief of the general staff is prone to "paranoia". On Friday, he broke with the official narrative, directly blaming [2] the military leadership and their oligarch friends for a reactionary full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He said [3] that Ukraine did not provoke Russia on February 24, on the contrary, it was the Russian elites who have been looting the Donbas territories they occupied since 2014 and becoming greedy and wanting more. His message was clear: The Russian army had waged a meaningless war, fought it incompetently, and killed tens of thousands of Russian soldiers.

Prigozin stated [4] that "the evil done by the country's military leadership must be stopped". He warned the Russian generals not to resist: "We will consider anyone who tries to resist as a dangerous disease and eliminate them immediately, including any checkpoints we encounter on the road and any flying objects seen in the sky." The roaring drama of Gozin's statement, the baroque language used, and the idea that 25,000 mercenaries would take the initiative to go to war and withdraw from the post of Russian commander immediately made many people ask the question: is that true?

Until the moment it started - Wagner's car was actually seen on the way from Ukraine in Rostov, a few miles from the border, and Wagner's soldiers were actually seen at a fast food restaurant in Rostov (formerly McDonald's) when buying coffee - it still seems impossible. But when they showed up in that city, when Prigozin posted a video in the courtyard of the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov, when they seemed ready to take control of Voronezh between Rostov and Moscow, all kinds of theories started to emerge up.

Perhaps Prigozin was working with the Ukrainians in an elaborate plot to end the war. Perhaps, the Russian army really tried to stop Prigozin's actions by denying his soldiers weapons and ammunition. Perhaps, this is Prigozin's way of securing his own job and survival. Perhaps, it was just that Prigozin, as a convicted thief living by the moral code of the Russian professional criminal class, felt looked down upon by the Russian military leadership and wanted respect. Maybe, just maybe, Prigozin had good reason to believe that some Russian soldiers would want to join him.

Because Russia no longer has anything resembling a "mainstream media" - just regime propaganda, and some exile media - there aren't any good sources now. We all live in a world of information confusion right now, but it’s a vacuum that’s even deeper because so many people are pretending to say things they don’t believe. To understand (or guess) what's going on, one must follow a series of unreliable Russian-language Telegram accounts, or read credible Western and Ukrainian OSINT bloggers who are farther from the action: say @wartranslated, which translates Russian and Ukrainian videos with English; or Aric Toler (@arictoler) of Bellingcat (an investigative group pioneering the use of OSINT) or Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) formerly of Bellingcat. Grozev now looks more credible because he had said months ago that the Wagner Group was preparing a coup. (I chatted with him this morning and told him it turned out he was right. He said, "Yeah, I was right.")

But the Kremlin may not have very good information either. Only a month earlier, the Emperor had praised Prigozin and Wagner for "liberating" Bakhmut of Udon after one of the longest and most protracted battles in modern military history. In contrast, today's insurrection is much better planned and executed: it took nearly 11 months to take Bakhmut, but Prigozin reached Rostov and Voronezh in less than 11 hours, taking officers and soldiers along the way. The support of the soldiers, it seems, the latter is waiting for them. [5]

Various military vehicles are now driving around Moscow in what appears to be an "Operation Bastion" aimed at defending the headquarters of the security services. A Russian military blogger said that units of the army, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service and others had been put on anti-terrorism alert in the early hours of Thursday morning in preparation for a terrorist attack from Ukraine. Perhaps, that's what the Kremlin wants its supporters to think -- though the blogger's sources are unclear.

But now, the inevitable conflicts—the emperor versus reality, and the emperor versus the cook—are building to a crescendo. Prigozin asked Defense Minister Shoigu to come to see him in Rostov, and Prigozin must have known that this was impossible. The Tsar responded by denouncing Prigozin without naming names, saying in an address to the nation on Sunday morning that "excessive ambition and self-interest lead to betrayal". A Telegram channel believed to represent Wagner responded: "Soon we'll have a new president." Whether or not which account was really Wagner's, some Russian security leaders acted as if it was and declared their respect for the Great. loyalty. Russia is slipping in a slow, out-of-focus fashion into what can only be described as civil war.

Perhaps, people should not be surprised by this. For months—indeed, years—the Emperor had been blaming foreign powers for all of his country's troubles, the United States, Europe, and NATO. He used bluff and arrogance to cover up the weakness of his own country and army, tried to use "white Christian nationalism" to deceive foreign Russian fans, and used imperialist patriotism to cut domestic leeks. Now he is confronted with a movement that conforms to the true values ​​of the modern Russian military, and indeed the true values ​​of modern Russia.

Prigozin is ungrateful, brutal, and violent. Money and self-interest drive him and his men. They were outraged by the corruption at the top, by the poor equipment they were given, and by the unbelievable casualties. They're not Christians, and they don't care about Peter the Great. What Prigozin is doing is giving them a psychologically comforting explanation for their current predicament: they didn't beat Ukraine because they were betrayed by their own leaders.

There are precedents for this time as well. In 1905, the disastrous performance of the Russian fleet in the war against Japan contributed to a failed revolution. In 1917, angry soldiers returning from World War I started another, more famous revolution. The Great alluded to the moment during a brief appearance on television Saturday morning. Back then, he said, it turned out that "the controversy behind the army was the greatest disaster, leading to the destruction of the army and the regime, the loss of vast territories, and ultimately a tragedy and a civil war." What he didn't mention was , until the moment before he abdicated, Tsar Nicholas II was still drinking tea with his wife, still writing his mediocre diary, and still imagining that ordinary Russian peasants loved him and would always stand in his diary. He was wrong.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/ukraine-counteroffensive-russia-goals/674333/

[2] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672177488535977984?s=20

[3] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672177488535977984?s=20

[4] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672314259907158028?s=20

[5] https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1672506763600437249?s=20