Joe Biden has been briefed on the chaotic situation in Russia with US officials describing it as “serious”.
The president was being kept informed as Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was accused by Moscow of launching an armed rebellion.
A White House National Security Council spokesman said: “We are monitoring the situation and will be consulting with allies and partners on these developments.”
A US official told CNN this crisis was “real” but the Pentagon and White House were waiting to see how it developed.
Steve Hall, former CIA chief of Russia operations, said it was in a “different league” to Prigozhin’s previous complaints against the Russian military hierarchy.
I know it’s good seeing the snake eat its own tale, but what happens if Wagner group takes over Russia? My understanding is that both the group and the guy in charge of the group are no better than Putin. Do they take out Putin, then step aside for a democratically elected president?
Genuinely curious—is there any reason to believe they’d actually do this?
Absolutely zero percent chance that happens. The only outcome of this is undisguised dictatorship. The only thing we don’t know yet is whether it’s Wagner succeeding and installing a military junta or Putin surviving and using this as an excuse to dissolve whatever semblance of a democracy they pretended to have.
I doubt things in Russia will get better but I’d expect the country would come out weaker so hopefully they wouldn’t be able to continue their wars since they’ll be more concerned with consolidating power.
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The plausible worst-case scenario is Prigozhin blames the war’s failures on Putin and the MoD, then calls for total mobilization and total war against Ukraine to win this. That wouldn’t bode well for Ukraine at all.
Russia has already instituted conscription and civilian terror tactics and done everything they really could do to win the war - there’s no further escalation available to them except into the realm of chemical weapons or similar, which would trigger further escalation from the west. And in the long run, NATO can outspend them - Russia’s only real source of aid is China, who will be demanding greater and greater concessions in return. On a strategic and geopolitical level, Russia lost a long time ago, and the only reason they haven’t withdrawn already is that it wouldn’t be survivable for Putin personally - he’d get couped the moment he showed weakness.
Don’t get me wrong, Prigozhin is an irredeemable monster who’s been at the head of some of the worst atrocities in Ukraine and who has based a lot of his appeal on his pyrrhic victory at Bakhmut (while also attacking Shoigu’s failures). But if the coup succeeds, he’s a monster with the political wiggle room to withdraw Russia’s dick from the Ukrainian beehive by blaming all failures on Shoigu and Putin destroying the great and powerful Russian military through their corruption and incompetence and blah blah blah stab in the back blah blah western decadence blah blah blah. And he will have significant political incentive to do so, since it will clear the way for the oligarchs to start making money again as sanctions lift.
Except currently prigozhin is saying the was in Ukraine is an illegal one (to throw shade at Putin he didn’t care before) but still he is now trying to play down Ukraine not up
He’s hoping Ukraine will attack and they’ll help him topple Putin?
And Prigozhin and his lawless band of ex-prisoners and other violent misfits gain control of Russian nuclear weapons. There are already reports of them seizing a nuclear weapons depot. This is not a turn for the better, except insofar as it could weaken the Russians’ position in Ukraine. But if Prigozhin seizes power things could get worse again for Ukraine. Prigozhin’s whole schtick is that the Russian military leadership has been incompetent in managing the war. It remains to be seen whether he’d go back at it harder or back out of the whole misadventure, blaming it on Putin’s military leaders.
I don’t see any chance for democracy anytime soon. Best case, Russian army and Wagner troops will decimate each other severely, and whoever ends up in power is struggling too much with domestic problems to effectively fight any other countries.
Worst case, one of the military leaders dies early, all troops end up intact in one hand, and whoever ends up the dictator is less inhibited to use nukes in Ukraine, thinking it might assert their dominance.
I think looking at coups historically would be beneficial. I don’t imagine Russia as a state (either way) will have much energy for foreign invasion while it’s dealing with an internal one. I would imagine there will be much they need to rebuild in an institutional sense…
I doubt anyone involved is going to step aside and risk falling out of a window for democracy in Russia.