What happened in Russia?: five theories on the Wagner revolt

After a surreal 36 hours, many long-established Russian experts are still scratching their heads as to what actually happened with the short-lived Wagner revolt. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner militia group, had been criticising the Russian military leadership for some months now. In one of his many angry Telegram video rants, he referred to the Russian plans to take Bakhmut as the “Bakhmut Meat Grinder”. 

The first glimmers of rebellion only appeared on Friday evening, filtering through on social media. Prigozhin said he would lead a “march of justice” against the “evil” of Russia’s military leadership. Russia’s FSB security service deemed him a criminal before the Wagner forces took Rostov-on-Don.

Putin then made a televised address on Saturday morning, accusing Prigozhin and his men of “treason” and pledging to put an end to the “armed mutiny”. Wagner seems to have gotten close to Moscow – as close as Voronezh, if not further – then turned round after a deal. What on earth happened?

There are a number of plausible theories circulating. Here are five:

1) Putin incompetence

One theory is that Putin simply lost control. This is definitely possible given his ample policy blunders. One such blunder was, crazily, allowing the establishment of a private army to fight what is meant to be a “special military operation” for the very survival of the nation. The conduct of the whole war thus far has proved how inept and disorganised the Russian military is – and the buck stops with Putin. Russians may yet start to work out that they’re sending their young men to a chaotic and mismanaged army whose leadership lacks a plan. This is exactly the populist rage that Prigozhin seems to have been acting on.

2) Putin and Prigozhin planned it

An unlikely but not impossible explanation of what happened is that Prigozhin, Putin’s old crony, sought a way out of the war and wanted to leave with his honour, such as it is, intact. In this scenario, Putin could look like he very quickly and easily crushed a serious mutiny and restored order from the chaos, avoiding civil bloodshed. If this is what happened, it went wrong. It has instead made Putin look incredibly weak given his televised speech where he said there would be the strongest possible punishment for traitors and no punishment has yet been dished out. Well, Prigozhin getting sent to Belarus probably is some penalty, but relatively mild.

3) The GRU worked with Prigozhin to teach Putin a lesson

One idea being floated on social media and in open source intelligence is that Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, was working with Prigozhin, presumably to teach Putin a lesson. This might explain how easily the Wagner group gained control of Rostov and quickly made their way to Voronezh unchallenged. But they weren’t totally unchallenged. There were reports of a Russian military helicopter opening fire on a band of rebel mercenaries on the road from Voronezh to Moscow. And what lesson would it teach? Well, that Putin isn’t as powerful as he thinks he is and, possibly, that there isn’t as much unanimous support for a long drawn-out war as first thought. 

4) Oligarchs and mafia rivals kickstarted a succession race

Another hypothesis is that Russian oligarchs and gangsters – those who help run the country for Putin – have with the help of elements of the GRU dramatically kickstarted a succession plan, on the basis Putin may be finished after launching a failed war. They could be testing Putin and showing him to be weaker than he thinks he is. This is the most conspiratorial of the theories going around but we know how corrupt Russia is. Former Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev downplayed such a theory, calling the mutiny “just a traditional Kremlin bulldog fight”. He told CNN: “They are gangsters fighting for their piece of the pie and the pie is becoming thinner because of the war and the sanctions”.

5) Just a failed coup d’twat

The most likely scenario may be that Prigozhin, both a clown and a thug, tried a coup and failed, or pretended that it was a coup knowing full well he wouldn’t go all the way to Moscow and start slaughtering fellow Russians on the streets of the capital. If it was a genuine coup being attempted, either he didn’t have the nerve for it or knew quickly that it was doomed to fail. If it was a ruse, he played his cards right and will no doubt have a cushy exile under the protective moustache of Lukashenko. Or more likely he will have to avoid tall buildings and food he hasn’t prepared himself. There is little point in Prigozhin investing any more of his ill-gotten gains in a pension plan.

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