Here we go again! This is the most appropriate remark to the coup attempt on Russia President Vladimir Putin by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary army.
In any unrest in Russia, the danger is that it may result in a nuclear civil war. This was a concern among Western diplomats in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. It was evident then that the entire Eastern Socialist bloc will follow, with the only question being: Will it be a peaceful split or a civil war with nuclear weapons? This dire development was averted when then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ordered the Red Army to stay in their barracks.The uprising of the Wagner group and Prigozhin’s exile to Belarus is equivalent to sweeping the dirt under a rug. But two outcomes are certain: 1) Putin’s regime has been diminished, and 2) Prigozhin is an incompetent revolutionary who does not know Russian history, and may regret his decision to abort the coup. The question now is: Who will gain access to the 6,000 nuclear weapons in Russia’s arsenal? Access to them appears to be easy. Prigozhin had walked into Rostov-on-Don unchallenged by the Russian military. It appears that there are no nuclear weapons in Rostov, judging from the Kremlin reaction.
However, an easy takeover of these weapons by any rebel group in other places in Russia is possible—with dire consequences for mankind. The structure of power in the defunct Soviet Union is replicated in Russia today. The agencies that hold the gun—the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior, and the KGB (now FSB), are the three pillars that support the regime. They are manipulated to check each other by the Kremlin rulers. This division was broken in 1991 during the coup against Gorbachev, when all three agencies joined in the coup led by the KGB’s Vladimir Kryuchov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, and Interior Minister Boris Pugo. This coup was aborted when Boris Yeltsin, who was elected President in 1991, rallied the Russian people in his famous speech atop a tank. Thus, the sentiment of the Russian people became the deciding factor. Still, this coup diminished Gorbachev’s power until he eventually agreed to dismantle the Soviet Union.
One can foretell how a coup will prosper in Russia by noting analogies in its history. If just one of the three pillars supports a coup, Putin will be in trouble. Numbers are meaningless in a civil unrest. In 1917, the Tsar had three million troops in the Eastern Front against a few thousand demonstrators in St. Petersburg. But the Tsarist regime fell when the troops summoned from the front defected and joined the rebels. In 1991, Yeltsin had only a few bodyguards in the Moscow White House against one regiment of the KGB Spetsnaz sent to arrest him. The Spetsnaz troopers also defected.
There were 30,000 Wagner troops against 300,000 troops of the Russian army in Ukraine. However, as shown by the events in Rostov-on-Don, these numbers are meaningless if the military units do not resist. Prigozhin had the crucial support of the military in his coup and that of the public support as seen by Rostov locals cheering the Wagner troops. This indicated the low level of support for the Putin dictatorship that was exacerbated by the unpopular war in Ukraine. In 1917, Vladimir Lenin recognized the dismal public support for World War I, and pulled Russia out of the war. He judged correctly that the country was so tired of the war that it would accept even a severe peace treaty.
Like Yeltsin, Prigozhin could have mounted a tank in Rostov, announced that he would terminate the Ukraine war, and continued the march to Moscow. Judging by the crowd response in Rostov and Voronezh, he might have made it to the Kremlin without any opposition. In this regard, when Putin initiated his “special military operation” in Ukraine, many believe that a sure way to end the conflict is to get rid of Putin. As noted above, this may result in a worse outcome as Putin has repeatedly bluffed about using nuclear weapons, Prigozhin may actually use them. This interlude in the coup by Prigozhin will have two definite outcomes: a drastic erosion in Putin’s power, with the military barely lifting a finger to stop the Wagner group, and Prigozhin, who missed his historical moment, dying by either falling from a skyscraper or being “poisoned accidentally.” The rest of mankind could bow its head in prayer and thanksgiving for avoiding annihilation—at least for now.
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Hermenegildo C. Cruz is a retired career ambassador with a graduate degree in Sovietology. He served in Moscow during the reform era under Mikhail Gorbachev until the fall of the Berlin Wall.