I recently came across an interesting report from RUSI (Royal United Services Institute for Defense, a leading British think tank that was, in fact, founded by the Duke of Wellington). RUSI claims to have obtained polling conducted by the Kremlin in an attempt to measure Russian attitudes toward Putin’s war. Of course there’s no way for me to verify whether it is real or accurate, but the results comport with common sense.
RUSI divides the population into five groups: “Cosmopolitans, Nihilists, Loyalists, Globalist Patriots and ‘Ura (Hoorah)-Patriots’.” Of these, only the “cosmopolitans” fervently oppose the war: many have ties to Ukraine, and I assume the rest are young and liberal, though the article doesn’t say. “Nihilists” are people who generally oppose the war but don’t care. The data RUSI cites puts this segment at about 10% of the population, though I suspect it’s larger: political apathy is perhaps the defining political characteristic of the Russian people. (Again, take a look at some of the interviews from 1420 I mentioned earlier. Or read Russian literature!)
But RUSI suggests that the Kremlin is more worried about the “Ura-Patriots”—a much larger group, and one that firmly supports the war. This group includes lots of military bloggers who chronicle the war, like Igor Girkin, whom I discussed here. Many of these bloggers are deeply critical of the actual conduct of the war, which they view as insufficiently competent or insufficiently aggressive (and of course they are correct in the former case). At other times they take sides in internal military disputes. The Kremlin has, at times, limited their ability to speak out, even sending Girkin to the front for a while. The Kremlin has a problem: of course it wants to maintain the support of nationalists, but that very group is the most dangerous in case of military failure.
They are rendered somewhat more dangerous by the rapid rise in prominence of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group. Wagner is a private military contractor frequently used in Russia’s foreign interventions—for example, in Syria, where Wagner troops once came into direct conflict with American forces, or Mali, or the Central African Republic. And it is increasingly vital to the war in Ukraine, not because of skill but because of manpower. The US estimates that Prigozhin’s PMC has deployed 50,000 troops to Ukraine—but 40,000 of them are former prisoners. For months, now, Prigozhin has flown into various Russian prisons with his personal helicopter, offering a simple deal: fight for Wagner, and if you survive, you’re free. You can watch his unorthodox recruiting technique below.
That message has proven successful—hence the 40,000 convict mercenaries. It works, in part, because Prigozhin himself is a former prisoner. He served nine years for assault, robbery, and fraud. He then opened a hot dog stand, and later restaurants and a catering business, which earned him lots of government contracts. He was a kind of food oligarch—and so has been nicknamed “Putin’s Cook.” (Do you have information leading to his arrest? Collect $250,000 from the FBI.)
The sudden influx in manpower has allowed Wagner to mount a series of offensives around Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s east, recently capturing the town of Soledar as part of an attempted encirclement. Wagner is using some of the techniques Russia used when it captured Severodonetsk and Lysychansk last spring—massive artillery barrages followed by advancing infantry. Only Prigozhin has a lot more infantry, and he doesn’t care whether his men survive. Photos (which I won’t link) show hundreds of unburied bodies of Wagner contractors lying where they fell in open fields.
Anyway, this offensive, though only modestly successful, has tied up lots of Ukrainian troops and inflicted fairly heavy losses, reducing Ukraine’s offensive capability elsewhere. That modest success has led to some power struggles between Prigozhin and the Russian Ministry of Defense. For example, Prigozhin harshly criticized General Alexander Lapin following Lapin’s defeat in the Kharkiv countryside in September. Lapin was subsequently relieved of his command. But then, in January, Russia reshuffled its command structure in Ukraine, removing Sergei Surovikin—its most competent commander so far, and one Prigozhin supported—in favor of Valeriy Gerasimov.
Those power struggles point to the key threat to Putin’s rule: military defeat and military disloyalty. I wrote earlier that sanctions won’t create popular unrest, but military defeat might. It may create particular resentment among Russian nationalists, or within the Russian MoD itself. The RUSI poll suggests that Putin knows it. And it won’t help to have 50,000 troops running about, free from MoD control, and mostly composed of convicts. (Wagner even has its own air force.)
Why would Putin tolerate Wagner? He’s doing what he has always done: divide and rule. Putin ensures that everyone in a position of power depends on him—and also that no one leader is indispensable. For Putin, Wagner balances against the regular military. But of course he can’t let Wagner grow too powerful, either. Putin’s probable concerns about military power make even more sense when you remember that his own roots lie in the security services, not the army. His is a security state, not a military state.
Neither Wagner, nor the Ministry of Defense, nor any other military entity, will stage a rebellion anytime soon. But these fault lines will matter if Putin’s power declines—as it will after his death, if not much sooner. It’s possible to imagine a post-Putin Russia falling into a civil war between various armed factions, not very different from the Civil War of 1917-1923. The parallels will grow as Putin continues to mobilize: that conflict expanded as it did in part because Russia was already filled with weapons and troops from WWI.
For now, then, don’t watch for protestors on the streets: watch for division and power struggles in the military. Keep an eye on Prigozhin, not to mention any new competitors. Watch, as the Kremlin does, the “Ura-Patriots,” not peace-loving liberals.