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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Vladimir Putin may have seen off an armed mutiny that plunged his government into crisis, but the wounds could prove fatal for his presidency.

Wagner group, a private military force that has flourished with Putin’s blessing has exposed just how disorganised and paralysed Putin’s government is – with Wagner marching from the Ukrainian front back through Russia towards Moscow.

Russia’s ruling elites will now go through deep recriminations over how the insurrection was able to continue largely unopposed, and those recriminations could decide the country’s future.

Today, Fellow at the ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre Matthew Sussex, on why Wagner’s rebellion makes Putin’s rule uncertain.

It’s Tuesday, June 27.

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RUBY:

Matthew, we’ve just seen an outright challenge to Putin’s power - in the attempted insurrection from Yevgeny Prigozhin and his men. This sort of action would have been inconceivable even a few months ago. But when you consider what has just happened in the context of the many revolts, revolutions and mutinies in Russian history - how significant is it?

MATTHEW:

Well, I think that in terms of the way we see Russia, we tend to think of its big upheavals as being great, big popular led revolutions. Now, in a lot of cases, that's not really right. Typically, when Russia has gone through these convulsions, it's been at least started as a kind of palace coup by people who have been insiders. And that's the case for the Russian Revolution just as much as it is, I think, the collapse of Soviet communism. So what we have here is something somewhat similar, but with, you know, a tighter scope. It's someone who is connected to the elite and connected to the Tsar. In this case, Vladimir Putin effectively going to war with the Russian Defence Ministry and then by virtue of that, connected to Vladimir Putin himself. So it's not a revolution, it's not a coup attempt. It's kind of more like a mutiny or an insurrection.

Archival tape -- Reporter 1:

“Breaking news armoured vehicles on the streets of Moscow as Russian state media this hour says security measures have been stepped up in Moscow.”

Archival tape -- Reporter 2:

“He's long been a well-known mercenary leader around the world. Now, Yevgeny Prigozhin is a wanted man in Russia as well.”

MATTHEW:

And I think it is going to have some fairly profound implications for Russian politics down the track, and particularly the stability of the Putin regime, as you say. It was unthinkable that someone would come out against Putin in the way that Prigozhin has and get effectively so close to the centre of power where there could have been fighting on the streets of Moscow, and that would have been really significant. The question is what kind of precedent does that set? Does it set a precedent for more instability or does it set a precedent for the Russian elite to pull back and say, okay, we will unite behind Putin? I guess we're going to have to wait and see.

RUBY:

So let's look at why exactly Yevgeny Preghozin and the Wagner Group launched this insurrection. When it began Pregozhin said that it was against the Russian Ministry of Defence and he named two men, the Defence Minister and the Chief of the general staff of the Russian army. So tell me a bit more about those two men and why the Wagner group was willing to march on Moscow to confront them?

MATTHEW:

Yes, certainly. So the Defence Minister is a man called Sergei Shoigu. He's been at the helm of Russian defence for quite a long time. He doesn't actually have a military background. You'll see him in pictures adorned with medals, none of which he's actually earned. And he doesn't have an enormous amount of respect within the Russian armed forces, particularly since the invasion of Ukraine, where the significant losses undertaken by Russian forces has led to real hardening of opinion against him.

The chief of the general staff is Valery Gerasimov, and he's been in that position for a long time as well. He's probably best known for something called the Gerasimov Doctrine. Now the Gerasimov Doctrine itself doesn't really exist, but it is something that was popularised around about 2012, 2013 based on a speech he gave that said effectively Russia needs to guard against colour revolutions on its own territory.

So the things that had happened in Ukraine, the things that had happened in Georgia and other places as well, he was very wary that there could be a revolt against the Russian leadership aided and abetted by the West. So he has been important in setting up this narrative that the West is to blame for everything and therefore politically important for Vladimir Putin, too.

Now, Wagner, of course, and Prigozhin have basically said that Shoigu and Gerasimov are giving orders that are absolutely awful, that they have failed to prosecute the war in Ukraine correctly and that their decisions have led to the deaths of large numbers of Russian military, but also particularly, of course, Wagner fighters.

Archival tape -- Reporter 1:

“Row after row of fresh graves. Wagner mercenaries killed in the last few months, most presumably in the blood soaked soil around Bahkmut.”

MATTHEW:

And Prigozhin has appeared in numerous videos bemoaning this and in fact telegraphing that if things don't improve, I'm going to come after you, Shoigu and Gerasimov

Archival tape -- Yevgeny Prigozhin:

“Shoigu! Gerasimov! Russian”

MATTHEW:

On one case, standing beside about ten corpses, dead Wagner fighters, saying, This is all on your Shoigu and Gerasimov. You're sitting in Moscow growing fat off the state while these people are dying.

Archival tape -- Yevgeny Prigozhin:

Russian

Archival tape -- Translator:

“These men here who died today are Wagner PMC. Their blood is still fresh.”

MATTHEW:

And this has been his narrative. So in a way, it's perhaps not surprising that he did, in fact, decide to take action because he has telegraphed it.

RUBY:

Okay. And so all of this inevitably led to a confrontation with Vladimir Putin, who until now was thought to be a protector and a patron of Prigozhin. It took 13 hours though for Putin to appear on Russian state television and to give this brief speech condemning the insurrection.

Archival tape -- Vladimir Putin:

Russian

RUBY:

So why do you think it took so long and what message does that send?

MATTHEW:

Well, I mean, it was extraordinary that Putin didn't get out in front of the cameras more quickly than he did. I think he was probably quite surprised that Prigozhin managed to very quickly take over the southern military district headquarters with barely a shot being fired and then send his convoy on towards Moscow. They had reached Voronezh, which is about halfway between Rostov-on-Don in the south and Moscow in a matter of hours.

Archival tape -- Vladimir Putin:

Russian

MATTHEW:

So I think it you know, he came out and said, well, this man is a traitor. All who agree with him are traitors, and they must be liquidated.

Archival tape -- Vladimir Putin:

Russian

Archival tape -- Translator for Putin:

“Any internal turmoil is a mortal threat to our statehood to us as a nation. This is a blow to Russia, to our people. Our actions to protect the homeland from such a threat will be harsh.”

MATTHEW:

only to reverse course. A few hours later, when that convoy was less than 2 hours from the centre of Moscow to say, Oh, well, we've got a deal. Everything's fine.

And I think that sends, you know, a really problematic message from Putin about who actually was in charge of the whole thing. He has typically reacted very swiftly to any note of dissent within Russian politics.

People find themselves arrested. People find themselves just simply falling out of windows. And the fact that he waited so long for this and then was forced to reverse his message very abruptly, I think really, really weakens him.

RUBY:

And after he gave that speech, the Russian army, the police, intelligence services, they didn't swoop in and they didn't prevent Wagner from continuing to march on Moscow in the end. The person who did put a stop to it was the president of a foreign country. So the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko. So why was he the one to step in here? And what does it say that he was able to intervene when leaders inside Russia couldn't?

MATTHEW:

Well, there are kind of two potential explanations here. One, that Lukashenko was used by the Kremlin to be the one who took the credit for negotiating a sort of end or defuse the conflict because they wanted to see Prigozhin exiled. They wanted to see him just basically go away. The other theory, of course, is that Lukashenko decided to insert himself into this in order to curry favour with the Putin regime. Now, Lukashenko, you know, may be a strongman at home in Minsk, but in reality, he's very weak. He's very reliant on Vladimir Putin for political support and for military assistance as well. So either way, however, I think, again, it doesn't look very good for Putin that you have a foreign leader seen as the person who negotiated the end to the most significant crisis that Vladimir Putin has faced during his time as president of Russia.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Matthew, you've been talking about the revolt by the Wagner Group in Russia over the weekend. And it seems like where we've arrived at is a fairly temporary resolution. So Vladimir Putin is in a weakened position within Russia. But can you paint a bit of a picture for me of the groups within Russia that Putin could be losing sway over? Who are we talking about here?

MATTHEW:

Well, the sort of intricacies of Russian politics are really quite hard to trace depending on who you talk to. There are eight, 16 or something like 22 different clans, people who dislike each other. People typically who have attempted to sell their colleagues in other parts of the ministries and other positions of power and influence down the river in order to get a leg up themselves. And this is precisely the system that Vladimir Putin has created. He's created a system where those elites compete with one another for his favour and always with the threat of punishment if they don't continue to toe the line. Now, the types of groups I think we're going to be most interested in here are the ones who have access to information. The ones who have access to weapons. And the ones who have access to the law. You know, jails, these are typically the main groups that get involved in toppling a leader because they have the power to do so.

Now, those groups have, you know, been very much at each other's throats for many, many years. But the question that comes now, I think, is, well, what happens if Putin decides to purge the military, purge the intelligence agencies and purge the Interior Ministry, because he is very worried that there was a great deal of complicity, if not just plain apathy about Prigozhin’s ride towards Moscow. The fact that he wasn't stopped, the fact that the Air Force didn't bomb the convoys, you know, only a few helicopters. And so if he does decide to purge those groups, that then creates an incentive for them to unite against him because they'll have seen what's happened over the weekend and thought to themselves, Well, actually, if you challenge the leader, you can in fact, survive. You don't necessarily have to be sent off to a work camp or die. Now, there's a real opportunity here to change the leadership. And I think this is something that's going to continue to fester as long as military defeats continue to rack up in Ukraine, and as long as Putin is unable to get control back over these clans that previously he's ruled with an iron fist.

RUBY:

And I suppose that raises the question of whether Prigozhin will actually survive this.

MATTHEW:

Oh, absolutely. You know, he may have a heart attack on the way to Minsk. When he's there, he, you know, may be taken against his will to a building that's more than one story and have an accident where he might just simply disappear. It's really interesting that since saying that he was off to Belarus, we haven't heard from Prigozhin at all. Now, that might be by accident, happenstance, or it might be entirely by design, where it might be that something nefarious has already happened to him. We simply don't know.

RUBY:

So it sounds like you think there is this very real possibility, though, that sometime in the next year or so we could wake up to find out that Vladimir Putin is gone, is no longer president of Russia. So if that happens, do you think we'll have much warning? Do you think there will be a sort of a drawn out power struggle or do you think this is more likely to be something that, if it happens, happens surprisingly swiftly?

MATTHEW:

Well, I think the way that these things usually go is that there's an awful lot of politicking behind the scenes and an awful lot of jostling for position and power that we wouldn't see. So it's likely that if there is a decision to move Putin on, we will hear about it, you know, very, very swiftly and suddenly. But that doesn't mean that, you know, lots of deals hadn't been done behind the scenes in the lead up.

In the case of Prigozhin’s dash into Russia, I think it's relatively clear that he'd been setting the conditions for this for some time. He's said publicly, in fact, telegraphing that he was going to come after the Defence Minister when his troops pulled back from the town of Bakhmut to regroup. He said that we're regrouping because Russia may have a job for us to do and then we will return to the front lines. So there are hints of these things that are sometimes picked up on and sometimes not picked up on. Now, for Putin himself, I think it will be very worrying that his intelligence services either are not telling him what's going on or potentially are not capable of knowing. And both of those are worrying for him, because if you can't rely on your intelligence services, then those are, you know, the key agencies that you use for information. And if you're getting bad information, then you get very worried about your position.

So, yeah, within the next 12 months, I think it is possible that we see a power transition in Russia. What that looks like is anyone's guess because of course the alternatives to Putin are all pretty much as bad or worse. And there would be the question then of whoever succeeds him, can they unite the different Kremlin tribes? Can they bring control and order to the state? And if they can't, then that raises a really worrying prospect. And that's about potential for civil unrest and civil war, even in the country that has the most nuclear warheads in the world. And that would have a really profound impact not just on Russia, but on security in Europe and frankly, on security in the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific as well. So it matters to us what happens in Russia just as much, I think, as it matters to the people of Ukraine and to the people of Russia itself.

RUBY:

Matthew, thank you so much for your time.

MATTHEW:

My pleasure. Always a pleasure to join you.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today.

The Australian government will provide an additional $110 million of military and humanitarian support to Ukraine.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the package was not spurred by events involving Wagner over the weekend, and had been in the works for some time.

And…

Former New South Wales MP Daryl Maguire has been charged with giving false and misleading evidence to the state’s ICAC, and will face court this week.

ICAC’s investigations into Maguire led to revelations of a relationship between him and the then-premier Gladys Berejiklian. Both are bracing for ICAC to release findings into each of them this week.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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