What should the West do about the Russian coup?

The answer: Keep out of it

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As of Saturday morning, it appears that an attempted coup is unfolding in Russia. Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group has seized control of Rostov, the operational center of Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, and apparently ordered his forces on to Moscow. It seems that elements of the regular Russian military are cooperating with Wagner or at the very least not resisting. Rostov is a city of over a million people and Wagner seems to have taken control of it without large-scale fighting, showing quicker territorial gains than they ever did in Ukraine. [Update: As I’m writing this, Wagner now claims control of Voronezh, a city en route from Rostov to Moscow, and a key supply route into Ukraine. Pro-regime forces are apparently setting up defenses outside Moscow].

Events in any situation like this are fast-moving and difficult to keep track of. Firstly, it’s hard to assess Prigozhin’s likely aims. He has stated that his goal is the removal of Russia’s military leadership, but it’s hard to imagine that he thinks he can just stop there. Vladimir Putin has predictably interpreted Prigozhin’s actions as an attack on his regime as a whole and responded aggressively. It seems that Prigozhin is now engaged in a full-on coup and the only way for him to walk away from this intact is for Putin to either be forced out or become so weakened that he limps on as a mere figurehead.

Prigozhin’s chances of success are similarly very difficult to determine. In a fluid situation like this, everything depends on what loyalties get revealed in the heat of the moment. Prigozhin is presenting what he’s doing as a soldiers’ rebellion against the incompetence of the Russian military leadership, which has sent tens of thousands of Russians to their deaths in Ukraine. That might win over disaffected military units and lead them to side with the coup, but Putin’s Russia is a patchwork of competing security agencies, some of them separate from the military entirely and less likely to respond to that narrative. The defense of Moscow is apparently being led by the FSB and Special Forces, which are presumably the forces that the regime regards as most loyal. We’ll see.

These events raise questions for Ukraine and its Western backers, particularly the United States. Here are some relevant points:

1. Crisis stability. A direct threat to the survival of Putin’s regime has been one of the scenarios Western analysts have worried could lead to the use of nuclear weapons or some other serious escalation by Moscow. Clearly, Putin is not going to nuke Rostov, but desperate people can do desperate things, and he may come to believe that some dramatic gesture will cause his security forces to rally around the defense of the regime. That might be a staged attack of some kind on Russian territory itself, or an escalation of tensions with NATO. The U.S. and its allies needs to watch out for this and be prepared.

2. Don’t give him any excuses. Related to this point is another: the West needs to be careful not to do anything that makes it look like it is somehow involved in, or getting ready to benefit from, what is unfolding in Russia. Putin is likely in a highly paranoid state of mind right now, and he has spoken publicly many times of his belief that the West has staged revolutions and coups throughout the former Soviet sphere. Even if he were entirely rational, signs of Western support for Wagner would give Putin serious propaganda benefits - so don’t do it. It’s not a good time to let Joe Biden near a hot mic, and we can just be grateful Donald Trump is no longer president and tweeting his way through the night.

3. Be prepared for the possibility of state fracture. It’s possible that these events won’t end either with Wagner tanks in Red Square or with Prigozhin before a firing squad. We might be witnessing the beginning of the long-term fracture of the Russian state, with rival power centers and warlords carving out control in different parts of the country. That not only complicates U.S. diplomacy - it is also incredibly dangerous in a nuclear-armed state. A fracturing of the Russian military raises the question of who exactly is in control if its nuclear weapons, both in terms of physical custody and ability to fire them. Warlords + nuclear weapons = bad times.

4. Get ready to deal with new leadership. If lightning strikes and Prigozhin or some military council emerges in charge of Russia, the United States will have to deal with that new leadership. It will be key to determine what they want and what can be gotten out of them. Even if Putin remains in power, he is likely to be substantially weakened and will need to shift policies to stitch together a new coalition in order to keep his regime together. That might mean changing his approach to the war, depending on whether he sees the need to shore himself up with the nationalist right or with the technocrats and oligarchs who have been more skeptical of the war.

5. What does it mean for the war? In the short-term, perhaps not much. Prigozhin has sent mixed signals about his intentions as regards the war in Ukraine. On the one hand he has tried to strike a patriotic pose, presenting himself as a guy who just wants to fight the war better than the Russian military command is capable of. He has been careful to claim that nothing he is doing is harming the ability of Russian troops to keep fighting at the front. On the other hand, one of the videos he recorded yesterday was a stark condemnation of the Putin’s regime entire narrative about why the war started in the first place. Prigozhin said that the idea that Ukraine posed a threat to Russia was a lie, and that the war had been started for the benefit of oligarchs who make money from the defense industry. If Prigozhin actually achieves some measure of success, it’s unclear what his demands will be.

6. What should Ukraine do? On the one hand, this seems like an excellent time for Ukraine to press on with its counteroffensive - Wagner troops have left Ukraine to go fight other Russians, and the regular Russian military appears in disarray. But sudden and vast Ukrainian territorial gains could change the politics of what is happening back in Russia - if Putin can argue that Prigozhin is dooming the entire war effort and causing vast new dangers to emerge for the Russian homeland, that might bring some waverers back onside. Like everybody else, Kiev is likely to sit back and see how this unfolds before making any dramatic move.

We’re still in the early hours of these events, but those are some initial thoughts. If you find these useful, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription, both to help support me in producing this content and because not all future updates on this topic will be available for free subscribers. In the meantime, Happy Coup Day!