The dilemma of the West after Wagner's 'putsch': either Putin or Prigozhin

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It would be childish to resort to the famous “raise crows and they will gouge out your eyes” to explain the insurrection of Wagner's mercenaries against the Kremlin. Among other reasons, because the coup goes much further than a bitter dispute between old comrades who have needed each other for years to consolidate their respective power..

It goes further because what is at stake is no longer even the war in Ukraine, with all the importance it has for the world order, but rather because of the consequences that the political and military destabilization of Russia would have in geopolitical terms..

Basically, because it would affect not only Eastern Europe, but the Caucasus, Central Asia and, of course, Africa, where Prigozhin's mercenaries play a relevant role.. Not to mention the multiplier effect that the Russian crisis may have on energy and food supply chains or on refugee flows in the event of chaos in the region, something of particular concern to Turkey, which has already suffered its own. with the Syrian crisis, which explains the prudent reaction of Erdogan, who has already spoken with Putin. Erdogan himself knows what he is talking about because in 2016 he already suffered a coup attempt that caused some 300 deaths and was quickly backed by Putin..

On a more strategic level, it would even affect the correlation of forces between China —Putin's great ally— and the US, whose interest in extending itself towards the State, through NATO, is something more than evident.. And there are the repeated calls for Georgia, located in the middle of the hornet's nest, to join the Atlantic alliance.

Although it is still too early to draw conclusions, the destabilization of Russia, let alone an open civil war that today seems unlikely, is the worst possible scenario because what Hans Magnus Enzensberger called molecular wars would come true.. In other words, the proliferation of small armed conflicts such as those that arose after the Cold War derived from the fragmentation of international politics after the end of the bipolar world, and which have been the breeding ground for the existence of private armies, such as Blackwater, the American contractor, was in the Iraq war, and they have come to shape the wars of the 21st century, the outsourcing of warfare, as happened in the Middle Ages, when warlords emerged in support of the monarch on duty.

decapitate the Kremlin

Not without reason it has been said that for the world it would be more worrying if Russia lost the war and was humiliated in Ukraine than even win it, because the wounded bear -with hundreds of nuclear warheads- is unpredictable. Or, even, that a coup could decapitate the Kremlin to the extent that his successor would not improve the current head of the Russian state..

It does not seem that Prigozhin —who does not have serious support in the Russian Ministry of Defense— could have behaved more civilly than Putin in the event that the attempt had succeeded, which in reality has served to weaken Putin in the face of his people and their elites. Nor, in light of history, is there reason to believe that Russia could move towards a smooth political transition after the era of the Russian president.. It is true that what the West would like most is the departure of the Russian autocrat, but there is nothing to indicate that his successor had a free hand to create a new internal order..

On the contrary, the regime's nomenclature would try to survive by sharpening a defensive strategy and accusing the instigators of change of being US puppets.. The dilemma of the West, therefore, is to decide if it is better to coexist, even if it is badly, with Putin or, on the contrary, it is necessary to support a path towards the unknown, with the aggravating circumstance that the circle closest to Putin has more two decades in power, which allows them to control the state apparatus down to the last detail. Not even the oligarchs today have the capacity to embarrass the Kremlin. Putin himself took it upon himself to liquidate them, which in his day meant a radical change from the Yeltsin era, which was always held hostage by Russian billionaires.. Now, it is just the other way around: Putin is in charge, although more touched after the march of Wagner's mercenaries towards Moscow.

The war in Ukraine, in this sense, has only strengthened its power under the protection of special legislation that protects its collaborators, the vast majority of whom are legally persecuted by the West, for which reason they cannot leave the country, which means that they lack of incentives to support any movement against Putin, whose popularity among Russians remains high sixteen months after the start of the invasion.

an internal matter

In any case, what is clear is that with the Rostov riot there is a certain risk that many of the conflicts that are hibernating today will come out of the fridge, with the dramatic consequences that this would have for the planet.. Above all, if the West makes the mistake of providing some type of support —logistical or armed— to territories that have been seeking for years to move away from Moscow's orbit, and that today would have more incentives given the unexpected weakness of Putin, who has not been able to control his own allies, even though for the moment he has the chain of command of his army under his control. For this reason, the words of Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, are to be appreciated when he speaks of an “internal matter”, although Washington is more in charge of this than the diplomacy of Brussels. You just have to remember what happened in Afghanistan when the CIA made a pact with the devil Taliban to throw Russian troops out of the country.

What is relevant, in any case, is that there is a certain risk, still difficult to gauge, that the fuse in the region and in Moscow's area of influence will catch on, taking advantage of Putin's weakness, who, as was evident, has a military force infinitely superior to Prigozhin's 25,000 men, whose logistical means, even though they are very experienced elite soldiers, are very limited, which made it inevitable that control of occupied areas could not last long. Among other reasons, because it is a vast territory, more than 1,000 kilometers, which means that Wagner's troops in Rostov would have been isolated as the column advanced towards Moscow..

Wagner's coup, in this sense, appears as a sequel, far removed in time, but with some common elements, of Hitler's putsch in Munich, and which in the end, a decade later, contributed to the Nazis reaching the German Chancellery. Again, the old Chamberlain dilemma. To do? Either Putin or Prigozhin.