Militia leader Prigozhin challenged Vladimir Putin in the best mafia fashion. Who won, and who triumphed? Everything is enigmatic and very Russian. Many of the gangsters who invented Putin 25 years ago are now expected to look for another boss until next spring’s presidential election. The coming months will not be easy for the naked emperor in the Kremlin.
“The conclusion of the NATO meeting is just ahead. The West must stay far both from the embattled Putin regime and from Russia, which remains a barbaric Eastern power”.
Vienna
After the uprising of the Russian militia leader Prigozhin and before the NATO summit in Vilnius in the second week of July, the questions are many and the answers few. What’s going on in Moscow? How long can Vladimir Putin, the now naked emperor of the Kremlin, last? Is Russia even a power that can be seriously talked to?
Russia has once again shown itself to be a gangster state, as foreign to Europe as the moon in space. The bloody war in Ukraine, an increasingly brutal dictatorship, presided over by gangsters, one of whom, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had his own army with which he rose against the gangster boss — these are conditions that in Vilnius should lead to Europe’s clear, long-lasting break with Russia: no more illusions, no more thinking, full support for the Ukrainians in their position as Europe’s forward defense against an Asian totalitarian state.
The whole concept is so crazy and opaque and yet so familiar that I have to remind Pyotr Stolypin, who must have said the following both wittily and wisely: “In Russia everything changes within 20 years and nothing within 200 years.” Stolypin, born in 1862, was the late tsarist’s best head of government. He was assassinated in the Kyiv Opera House in 1911. It is unclear to this day whether his killer — who was later hanged — was sent to the city by the Socialist Revolutionary Party, of which he was a member, or by the Okhranka, the Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order, who used him as a stickler and handyman. “Nothing works, everything is corruption and violence, everyone fights everyone,” writes a friend to me. “We can only hope that Putin forgets to wake up one morning, preferably soon.”
Russia has once again shown itself to be a gangster state, as foreign to Europe as the moon in space. The bloody war in Ukraine, an increasingly brutal dictatorship, presided over by gangsters, one of whom, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had his own army with which he rose against the gangster boss — these are conditions that in Vilnius should lead to Europe’s clear, long-lasting break with Russia: no more illusions, no more thinking, full support for the Ukrainians in their position as Europe’s forward defense against an Asian totalitarian state.
The whole concept is so crazy and opaque and yet so familiar that I have to remind Pyotr Stolypin, who must have said the following both wittily and wisely: “In Russia everything changes within 20 years and nothing within 200 years.” Stolypin, born in 1862, was the late tsarist’s best head of government. He was assassinated in the Kyiv Opera House in 1911. It is unclear to this day whether his killer — who was later hanged — was sent to the city by the Socialist Revolutionary Party, of which he was a member, or by the Okhranka, the Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order, who used him as a stickler and handyman. “Nothing works, everything is corruption and violence, everyone fights everyone,” writes a friend to me. “We can only hope that Putin forgets to wake up one morning, preferably soon.”
In Vilnius, the NATO leaders and the guest of honor, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy, who in the 21st century is to Europe what the Pole Lech Walesa and the Czech Vaclav Havel were to Europe in the 20th century, can see – what many Russians, not least Putin’s enemies, has found – that the Russian vozdh` or leader is not what he is supposed to be: Russia’s strongman.
When Prigozhin launched his rebellion, Putin denounced his old comrade on TV as a traitor. Prigozhin had stabbed the Russian people in the back. He and his private army would be punished for high treason, the equivalent of 20 years in prison (far less than the 25 years Vladimir Kara-Murza, a peaceful critic of the regime, was sentenced to in April).
That same evening, as the Wagner militia approached Moscow, Putin’s vassal in Minsk, President Lukashenko, announced that the rebellion was over, that Prigozhin and his mercenaries had been pardoned, and that the militia leader would be granted asylum in Belarus. Two days later, Putin returned to the TV screen with a statement so thin and contradictory that it was hard not to see him stripped to the skin. This meltdown of power will not go unanswered in the mafia circles that surround Putin, protect him, and use him for their own purposes. Putin suddenly looks like a repeat of the misery of the later liquidated Tsar Nicholas in the Russo-Japanese War and in the First World War.
Prigozjin, former convict and hot dog seller in Skt. Petersburg, challenged in the best mafia style Putin, the militia commander lost? Only maybe. Prigozhin has disappeared, but on Monday published an 11-minute-long video in which he explains himself without really creating clarity. Is he still alive and if so where? Is he in Belarus? Is he arrested or at large? Have his supporters in the ultra-nationalist camp, which extends far into the armed forces, given up? Barely. Did Putin win? Only maybe. Had he won clearly, the Wagner column (estimated at about 400 vehicles, ranging from buses to tanks and mobile guns, manned by about 4,000 insurgents) would have been bombed from the air on the highway from Rostov to Moscow. It didn’t happen. Why not? Everything is enigmatic and very Russian. One can be sure of this much, however, that many of the gangsters who invented Putin 25 years ago are looking around for another boss until next spring’s presidential election if it even comes to fruition. The coming months will not be easy for the naked emperor in the Kremlin.
Putin launched the Ukraine war without a second thought and is now caught up in its disaster. The war will end where it began, in the Kremlin, and it will end with the downfall of Putin. The conclusion of the NATO meeting is just ahead. The West must stay far both from the embattled Putin regime and from Russia, which remains a barbaric Eastern power.
Stolypin in memoriam: everything changes, everything remains as it always was.
Author: Per Nyholm
Per Nyholm is a Danish journalist and writer, specializing in Eastern and Southern Europe. His latest book, De Viatge pel País de la Sang”, was published by Saldonar in February 2023. He is currently finishing a book on Catalunya, Portugal and Spain.
