Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses units of his country's armed forces at the Kremlin in Moscow on June 27.Sergei Guneyev/The Associated Press
The winds of change come infrequently to Eastern Europe. When they do come, they often blow violently.
Last weekend’s abortive rebellion in Russia is thus being studied with a mixture of optimism and fear by the region’s other would-be revolutionaries. While warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin says he never intended to challenge Russian President Vladimir Putin, only the country’s defence establishment, the fact that his column of mercenaries was able to get within 300 kilometres of Moscow – with the Russian capital looking ill-prepared to resist before Mr. Prigozhin suddenly backed down – has caused others to wonder if the next gust could sweep away Mr. Putin’s suddenly brittle-looking regime.
No one knows what would follow. While the end of the Cold War is remembered in Poland and Germany for striking workers and the peaceful dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the tumult was bloodier and more prolonged further east in Moscow, where political struggles brought tanks onto the streets in 1991 and again in 1993.
After that period of chaos, Soviet-style authoritarianism returned to Russia at the turn of the century in the form of Mr. Putin. The former KGB agent’s moves over two decades to turn back the clock have now cast a dark shadow over neighbouring Belarus, which has not yet seen its democratic revolution, and Ukraine, where the quest for freedom is now a fight to the death against revanchist Russian invaders.
Many Belarusians and Ukrainians believe their countries will only be free when change again comes to Moscow and a different Russia – one that doesn’t view itself as the centre of a stolen empire – emerges.
Mr. Putin, who is known to be haunted by the last hours of former Kremlin allies such as Slobodan Milosevic and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, spent the days after the mutiny trying to convince Russians and the watching world that he remains the popular head of a functioning regime. He repeatedly praised his security forces for their loyalty and bravery, which they did not exhibit during the uprising, and tried to give the impression that he was in control of events all along.
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“In keeping with my direct instructions, steps were taken to avoid spilling blood,” the 70-year-old Mr. Putin said in one of a flurry of television appearances this week. “An armed mutiny would have been suppressed in any event,” he added, even though the Wagner column appeared to face almost no resistance as it sped through several Russian provinces along the M-4 highway toward Moscow.
By Thursday, there were swirling rumours of a purge among Russia’s military leadership. General Sergey Surovikin, who commanded Russian forces in Ukraine from October to January and who is considered close to Mr. Prigozhin, has not been seen in public since shortly after Wagner crossed into Russian territory. The country’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, has also been conspicuously absent from Mr. Putin’s televised meetings with top security officials.
The fates of Mr. Milosevic and Col. Gaddafi will have taught Mr. Putin that it’s possible to govern without the support of the people – as long as you retain the loyalty of the security services. Once that’s gone, however, it’s only a matter of time before the people realize the emperor has no sword.
This is, of course, a crisis of Mr. Putin’s making – his decision to invade Ukraine 16 months ago set the subsequent events in motion – just as the collapse of previous authoritarian systems can be traced to the misjudgments and misdeeds of their rulers. How the long-ruling Kremlin boss will react to the emergence of threats to his power is yet to be seen, though no one expects him to gracefully step aside and agree to stand trial for the war crimes he is accused of by the International Criminal Court.
He will likely do anything in his power not to end up like Mr. Milosevic, who died in The Hague while on trial for war crimes committed by his Serbian forces, or Col. Gaddafi, who was brutally beaten and killed in the street by an angry mob of Libyans he once ruled.
From his prison outside Moscow, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny – who has been poisoned and jailed because of his peaceful resistance to Mr. Putin – said that when he heard of Mr. Prigozhin’s mutiny he initially thought it was a joke he didn’t understand because of his isolation from the outside world. The irony, he said in a social media post made via his lawyers, was that he remained in jail accused of “forming an organization to overthrow President Putin by violent means,” when all he had done was expose corruption and demand free and fair elections, even as Mr. Prigozhin was immediately granted amnesty after staging an actual armed insurrection.
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But while Mr. Navalny sounded deeply worried about the events unfolding in his country, others saw reasons for hope.
Ukrainian troops took advantage of the chaos behind the Russian front line to continue a counteroffensive that began earlier this month, aimed at liberating the roughly 15 per cent of the country that is under Russian occupation. While progress in that campaign has thus far been incremental, President Volodymyr Zelensky was in an upbeat mood when he visited his troops Monday. “Our warriors have advanced in all directions,” he said without elaborating. “This is a happy day. I wished the guys more days like this.”
Belarusian pro-democracy leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, meanwhile, was meeting with her political allies in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. There was concern over the outcome of the standoff in Moscow – which saw Belarus’s own long-ruling dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, agree to host Mr. Prigozhin and his Wagner fighters – but also hope that change was once more on its way to Europe’s eastern edge.
“Many Belarusians were inspired, were activated, by Saturday’s events. We received many messages, many new contacts. I had a feeling like in 2020 at some point – the moment is coming, changes are coming,” Franak Viacorka, Ms. Tsikhanouskaya’s chief political adviser, told The Globe and Mail, referring to the mass protests against Mr. Lukashenko three years ago after he claimed victory in an election most Belarusians believe was won by Ms. Tsikhanouskaya.
“We immediately gathered all the democratic forces, all the groups. Usually it takes so long, but this time immediately everyone was involved because we felt the change in the air,” Mr. Viacorka said of the turmoil in Russia. “Things have changed for Putin forever, and also for Lukashenko. … I think after Prigozhin, there will be other Prigozhins – other people within the Russian architecture willing to challenge Putin.”
Ilya Ponomarev promises that much is true. The former Russian MP now lives in Kyiv, where he is the political representative of the Freedom of Russia Legion, a unit of Russian citizens fighting on Ukraine’s side in the war. Mr. Ponomarev said the surprising success of Mr. Prigozhin’s uprising was “proof of concept” for the Freedom of Russia fighters, who believe that change in the Kremlin will only come through military means.
The Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps have formed an alliance of convenience (the latter is a far-right group, while Mr. Ponomarev is left-wing) with the aim of taking the fight across the Russia-Ukraine border and eventually deposing Mr. Putin. While the two groups are believed to only have a few hundred fighters each, they staged a series of cross-border raids in May and June that, like the much larger Wagner revolt, met surprisingly little resistance as they briefly took control of several small towns.
Even before the Wagner rebellion, Mr. Ponomarev said, there was a “huge line of people” seeking to join his legion, creating a bureaucratic bottleneck as its leadership tried to verify the backgrounds of volunteers. A growing number of Russians are disillusioned enough with Mr. Putin to take up arms, he said.
“One year ago, we had exactly zero supporters,” because Russia’s democrats were only willing to challenge the Kremlin by peaceful means, Mr. Ponomarev said in a recent interview in Kyiv. Now, he said, recent polling suggested that while 60 per cent of the Russian opposition still believed in non-violent methods, 30 per cent were ready for armed resistance.
That figure has almost certainly risen again since Wagner’s charge toward Moscow. “We will actually do what Prigozhin just pretended to be doing,” Mr. Ponomarev wrote via WhatsApp this week.
In his message from prison, Mr. Navalny sounded far less optimistic about the road ahead.
“As for what happened, I understand as little as everyone else. But some things are clear. There is no greater threat to Russia than the Putin regime. … The Putin regime is so dangerous for the country that even its inevitable collapse will create a threat of civil war,” the 47-year-old lawyer said.
“The fact that the war unleashed by Putin can destroy and break up Russia is no longer a dramatic exclamation. This is obvious, but nevertheless it must be repeated again and again: This is not a democracy. … These are dictators and the usurpation of power leads to disorder, a weakened state, and chaos. Always.”
Mark MacKinnon