Vladimir Putin is convening a weekly meeting of the Security Council in the coming days as the Kremlin tries to claim its invasion of Ukraine will continue as planned. That effort will depend on how the Russian president decides to treat his two generals, who were the targets of a failed mutiny.
They have not been seen in public since Yevgeny Prigozhin staged an extraordinary coup that ousted Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russian invasion force commander Valery Gerasimov.
Although Prigozhin and his Wagnerian paramilitary forces eventually halted their march on Moscow and the warlord agreed to leave Russia, he left both men increasingly vulnerable.
Analysts said the failed insurgency left Putin with a stark choice – whether to fire the generals or let them continue to direct his faltering invasion, both of which face major risks of war and further blows to his regime risk.
“Shoigu and Gerasimov are doing terrible jobs, and it’s dangerous for Putin to keep them on,” said Dara Masicott, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation in the United States. “But loyalty and stability are important to Putin. Number one. I just don’t understand how he’s going to accept those terms.”
Prigozhin has been targeting Gerasimov and Shoigu for months, blaming them for Russia’s military shortcomings in Ukraine and painting them as incompetent leaders as Russian soldiers die on the battlefield , they sat comfortably in Moscow.
By Sunday, some Russian military analysts were speculating that Shoigu and Gerasimov might have been the other two casualties of the failed coup, after Prigozhin and his fighters walked half the distance from the Ukrainian border to Moscow to capture a military base and shot down several military helicopters – all within hours.
“Shoigu and Gerasimov are clearly lame ducks now, and I think they will be eliminated,” said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Strategic and Technical Analysis, a defense think tank in Moscow. He did not rule out the possibility of their departure. is part of a brokered deal that led to Prigorzhin’s dismissal of his men. The Kremlin denies this.
The damage to Russian prestige has been so great that even pro-war commentators on state television and social media have acknowledged that the coup has called the entire war into question.
“This is a serious blow to the authority of the state and the authority of the president,” Karen Shakhnazarov, a film director with ties to the Kremlin, said in a popular online live broadcast. “There’s a sense here that everything is unshakable, but it turns out that’s not the case.”
If Shoigu and Gerasimov are ultimately forced out, it would mark a dramatic downfall for both men — one a figure in Russia’s political hierarchy and the other a long-serving military official who later became the catalyst for a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. commander.
The first was Shoigu, Russia’s longest-serving minister, who took over the defense briefing in 2012 after decades as Russia’s emergency services minister. The job has given him a public profile that rivals Putin’s, making him appear on television by land or helicopter every time there is a man-made or natural disaster in Russia.
Over the years, he has accompanied Putin on vacations to Siberia, where the two have posed mushroom picking together;
Scrutiny of the reputations and business dealings of members of the Shoigu family has grown in recent years, making them the target of the ire of hardliners for their privileged lifestyle and seeming indifference to the aftermath of the war.
Meanwhile, Gerasimov was at odds with commanders who disagreed with his brutal tactics in Ukraine, which both generals and militia members believed cost too much and gained too little.
Prigozhin has been critical of Shoigu and Gerasimov, and the Russian military more broadly, for months. In a video message earlier this spring, Prigozhin rapped against the backdrop of a Russian cemetery. “You’re sitting in an expensive nightclub and your kid enjoys making YouTube videos . . . these people are dying so you can get fat in a plank office.”
The reception Wagner’s men received in Rostov indicated that Prigozhin’s tirades to the army leadership were well received. When Prigozhin demanded a confrontation with Shoigu and Gerasimov on Saturday morning, Vladimir Alekseev, the deputy head of Russia’s military intelligence service, laughed: “Take them down!”
The crowd waved, cheered and posed for photos with Prigozhin as Wagner left the southern city that was the launch pad for the coup, but booed the security forces who came to replace them.
The main spark for Prigozhin’s coup appears to have been Putin’s support for Shoigu’s move earlier this month to get Wagner to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense.
“Wagner’s problem is getting worse, and after (the statement) it will reach a crisis point. Putin may well have been warned, but not take any action. “
According to a person who has known Prigozhin since the 1990s, despite Putin’s public support for Shoigu’s efforts, Prigozhin has vehemently rejected it — realizing that such an arrangement would undermine his reputation as a do-it-yourself leader. Putin’s status as a powerful warlord.
“He knew very well that if he went to zero, then Shoigu was going to deal with him at some point. So he went all out and decided to show Putin that he was the only real person and he needed to handle his money alone, “The person said. “He got it a little bit wrong and everything turned out to be a mess, as it usually happens (in Russia).”
Massikot said Putin’s biggest mistake was supporting Shoigu without finding an acceptable face-saving solution for Prigozhin.
“When he supported the Ministry of Defense, he basically put the target on Prigozhin’s back,” she said. “A competent politician would offer to offer incentives to Prigozhin, or bribe him with something. Clearly, this has not been done.”
With Prigozhin now in exile, Shoigu’s position may even be strengthened, as Putin sees no reason to fire a loyalist, according to people familiar with the warlord.
“Shoigu is the only winner,” the person said. “He will always be Secretary of Defense.”