This is my fourth summer post with the running title, “Leadership in Russia.” The previous three are here.
In an earlier piece I wrote that after the failed, finally half-hearted mutiny of Yevgeny Prigozhin against Vladimir Putin the latter was likely to follow his previous pattern. The suggestion was that Russia’s leader would take down Wagner’s leader by imprisoning him, poisoning him, or murdering him. Given that Prigozhin’s plane yesterday fell out of the sky leaving nothing behind but charred debris – including the remains of ten passengers – the path that Putin chose is clear. Everyone without Russia is near certain that he was responsible for the death of Prigozhin and, more importantly, everyone within is near certain as well.
Once Putin launched his attack on Ukraine, he found himself on the horns of an unfamiliar dilemma. He needed someone. Putin badly needed Prigozhin. And Putin badly needed the political and, especially, military support of the group that Prigozhin led. The by now notorious Wagner group.
Putin tolerated Prigozhin’s increasingly overt upstart ways for as long as he did because Prigozhin’s brutality enabled Putin’s brutality. But once Prigozhin got too big for his britches, once Prigozhin threatened Putin directly, the latter concluded he had no choice but to shoot the former down, literally.
So where does this now leave Putin? He got his revenge – and he sent a warning shot that no Russian could possibly miss. “Don’t mess with me or you’ll get your heart cut out and your head cut off.”
But make no mistake. Putin’s short-term win incurs long-term costs. First, in Prigozhin Putin lost an inordinately important if ultimately unreliable ally. Second, Putin cannot any longer count on the Wagner’s group’s powerful presence and invaluable contribution in Ukraine or, for that matter, in Africa, where it also importantly defended and expanded Russian interests. And third, manifest murder is a bad look. On the one hand Putin comes across as a tough guy willing to go for the kill. But on the other hand, he comes across as weak. As a leader who felt forced to assassinate a competitor.