In terms of factional conspiracy, this represents a stage in the perhaps gradual crackup of an autocrat’s system of playing his magnates against each other. More broadly, it exposes the eternal problem in dictatorships: In a system where real opposition is forbidden, conspiracy is the only way to register protest or promote change. On the political spectrum, the mutiny reveals the dissident pressure from nationalist-imperialists within the elites who believe Putin has not waged war fiercely enough. This certainly was the old story of a mercenary captain demanding gold and guns for his warriors. In this, history can be usefully revealing-but never the final word. There are many ways to analyze the Prigozhin mutiny and the strange maneuvers since. We outsiders know little of the real intrigues of a personalized autocracy in which a vast state is ruled by a tiny clique under a single despot. Perhaps it was a recognition that Wagner had fought so well for the motherland. Meanwhile, at a meeting with Wagner officers at the Kremlin on June 29, Putin received Prigozhin, whom he had called a traitor less than a week before. At the time of writing, Shoigu and Gerasimov remain in command of the war in Ukraine. Some, apparently including his most competent fighting general, Sergey Surovikin, disappeared, possibly arrested for acquiescing in Prigozhin’s plans. Putin celebrated with a military parade in the Kremlin, attended by Shoigu, while several senior officers were dismissed for criticizing the conduct of the war. But having seized Rostov-on-Don and marched on Moscow, Prigozhin accepted the mediation of another Putinite courtier, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko. Prigozhin seemed to be demanding the dismissal of the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of staff, Gen. On June 23, the Russian warlord, mercenary, and billionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner troops had performed with brutal resilience in the war against Ukraine, led his men in a short-lived mutiny against his patron, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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