What's more deadly than nuclear fallout? Political fallout, especially in Russia.

Russian soldiers gathered Tuesday to celebrate Putin’s hold on power Photo: TASS

How long did it take to threaten Vladimir Putin’s grip on power in Russia?

36 hours.

That’s how long the enormous country of Russia, with its thousands of nuclear weapons, its vast reserves of natural gas and oil, its proud centuries-old history, and now its faltering war of aggression against Ukraine, to be rattled by a vehicular column of about 8,000 soldiers and a bunch of tanks mounted on flatbed trucks. 

That’s what Moscow was facing on Saturday as Sergey Prigozhin’s Wagner Group of mercenaries rolled down the M-4 highway to within 125 miles of the Russian capital.  It wasn’t Prigozhin’s whole 25,000-strong Wagner army.  The Wagner forces that moved toward Moscow amounted to about a brigade, and from what I saw from the news and on TV, it wasn’t a full-strength brigade, which would have included fuel trucks, headquarters and communications units, and ammunition supply vehicles, all of which were missing in Russia on Saturday. 

Prigozhin’s strike towards Moscow was so ill-prepared that U.S. intelligence agencies knew it was going to happen by the middle of last week.  There are reports today that at least one retired Russian general, Sergey Surovikin, the former overall commander of the Russian army in Ukraine, also had advance knowledge of the attack.  The New York Times reported today that Surovikin’s prior knowledge of the rebellion prompted “questions about what support the mercenary leader had inside the top ranks of the Russian military.”  That’s newspeak for reporting where sources have told the Times there is a lot going on beneath the surface in the Russian military, but they can’t yet nail down how bad things have gotten.

We know from the Discord leaks that came from Air Force specialist Jack Teixeira that U.S. intelligence has penetrated the Russian defense command structure, probably using electronic surveillance, to the point that we know what’s going to happen over there before Putin does.  The truth of the Discord leaks was born out last week with our knowledge of Prigozhin’s moves.  In fact, there is now reporting that our intelligence services were nervous about what they knew, for fear it would get out and make the U.S. vulnerable to Putin charging that we were behind an attempted coup.

Whatever happened with Prigozhin’s rebellion in the end, the fact remains that his Wagner forces were able to seize the military headquarters of the entire Russian effort in Ukraine without a shot fired.  Prigozhin made sure there were photographs taken of him inside the Russian headquarters compound in Rostov-on-Don, as well as the photos of him leaving in the black SUV. We also know that Prigozhin’s Wagner convoy encountered little if any resistance as it moved north nearly 475 miles to within 125 miles of the Kremlin itself.  I reported the other day that none of the photos of the Wagner convoy showed any fuel trucks accompanying the armored personnel carriers and flatbeds carrying Wagner tanks, proving that Prigozhin’s convoy was refueling from civilian gas stations along the way.

Now the international media is packed page to page, TV studio to TV studio, with talking heads speculating about how much trouble Putin is in.  The conventional wisdom varies all the way from a whole lot to none at all.  Politico polled a list of Russia watchers over the weekend, and here are a few assessments:

Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation told Politico, “This won’t weaken Putin or affect the war.”  He called the whole thing “not a coup and perhaps not even a mutiny” and noted that “Prigozhin did not utter a single word against Putin.”  Which may have turned out to be the smartest thing he did, Nikolai, or didn’t you notice that Putin made a deal with Prigozhin, and he hasn’t gone out a window in Belarus…not yet, anyway.

Rajan Menon, director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defense Priorities opined, “This much is certain: The image of invincibility Putin has sought assiduously to project for over two decades has been tarnished.”  He noted that ending the crisis required Putin “to cut a deal” after he had publicly accused Prigozhin of treason. 

Matthew Rojansky, CEO of the U.S. Russia Foundation and distinguished fellow of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute – boy, there sure are a lot of people making a living as Russia watchers – called Prigozhin’s gambit “a stress test of Putin’s public image and of the regime’s internal security order — from which both have emerged looking more vulnerable.”  He said Putin “may see doubling down as the solution to all his problems — declaring martial law and a new round of mobilization to enable stepped up repression, to distract from his weakness at home,” and that we could “expect purges in Moscow.”

Olga Oliker, Crisis Group’s program director for Europe and Central Asia, said, “The big thing we learned about Putin was that he doesn’t seem to have prepared for this contingency. After so many years of crushing dissent from the left, the actual threat came from the right, where the Kremlin had actually allowed criticism.” 

All of which kind of makes old Vladimir look pretty clueless, doesn’t it?  He thought Prigozhin was his friend, or with his Wagner Group at least a useful idiot with a lot of cannon fodder to throw into the deteriorating fray in Ukraine.  Putin apparently had no idea this was coming, and was caught so completely off guard, he made a hasty deal with a man he had labeled a “traitor” and “back stabber” to bring it to an end.  No matter what you think of Prigozhin – a thug, certainly a war criminal (it was Wagner troops who killed civilians in Bucha), a thief, and an obvious egomaniac, he was able to singlehandedly stick a pin in Putin’s balloon and begin the slow leak we’re watching today. 

So, what’s a weakened, clueless dictator to do after such a humiliation?  Why, hold a big ceremony in the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square, of course!  According to the Moscow Times, Putin ordered 2,500 soldiers and members of the National Guard, the Federal Security Service (FSB) intelligence agency, the Interior Ministry, and the Federal Guard Service (FSO) be gathered together so he could thank them for helping to save the country.  “You have de-facto stopped the civil war, you acted in a clear and well-coordinated manner in a difficult situation.” Not one of the uniformed goofs listening to him had raised a finger to stop the Prigozhin mutiny over the weekend.  “We did not have to remove combat detachments from the special military operation zone,” Putin continued, conveniently omitting the fact that he wouldn’t have been able to move even a platoon from Ukraine to stop the Wagner convoy if he wanted to.  Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who has fucked up everything with the sole exception of digging a fabulous maze of trenches across the broad front lines in Ukraine, also attended the ceremony as an honored guest.

I couldn’t find any reports of medals being awarded n Cathedral Square yesterday, but take it from me, that’s what armies do when they’re losing wars:  they hand out medals and celebrate victories only they can see.