Wagner's unfinished Ring

Like most folk I'm perplexed by the weekend's developments in Russia, with a significant part of the Wagner Group mercenary force taking two Russian cities and setting out for Moscow only to turn back, leaving us with a confusing media soundscape from Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Progozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin. It's a bit like an opera...

Act One of the Wagner Ring was the development of the "private army" force and its deployments (to Russa's ends) in Syria and Africa. Act Two was its deployment to Ukraine and significant expansion through recruitment of convicts given five minutes - or maybe as much as ten - to decide whether to sign up in exchange for a pardon after serving, an offer many of them felt they couldn't refuse, whether they believed the promise or not. Act Three was Prigozhin marching a chunk of them a fair way towards Moscow to protest about the Wagner Group being disbanded and/or to put pressure on his president to remove his bete noire, the Defence Minster Sergei Shoigu - and maybe, I wonder, so he could be put in charge of the Russian army himself. The fact that Wagner forces seem to have been the subject of quite a few "friendly fire" hits while serving in Ukraine might have been part of the reason for them being willing to risk going out on a limb and mobilising against their own country. Act Four was the U-turn, with Prigozhin backing down and scuttling off to Belarus in exchange for his forces and himself not being charged with serious criminal offences.

Now Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle has four component operas but I wonder if this cycle has finished, or will there be a fifth act?

The broad concensus seems to be that Putin has been seriously weakened by these events. Clearly, having a private army operating in an adjacent country that turns on you is sub optimal and the very fact that it happened has dented Putin's aura of domestic invincibility. But could Putin yet be considered to have handled it well once the insurrection happened? Wagner Group was getting too powerful and had potential to act out of control; it is now being subsumed into the Russian army as its members have an option to sign a contract for the regular army or join Prigozhin in exile in Belarus. That would appear to put most of Wagner's forces under the control of Shoigu and the regular army leadership. In which case it's not clear how that weakens Putin. For a start it would appear to reduce the risk of an armed insurrection against him. 

All of this and no loss of blood. Regular Russian forces didn't have to shoot at their mercenary compatriots. We can wonder whether they would have done or not. Maybe Putin wonders that too, but it wasn't tested. 

So is he really weaker? He looks it at the moment if only because clearly a significant armed force was acting entirely outside of his control and then because of a strange media silence for 48 hours after his initial statement. The presidential plane flew to St Petersburg on Saturday though we don't know wheher Putin was on it. But we can wonder whether he did a chicken run from Moscow to St Petersburg or his palatial bolt hole on the Black Sea, though he might say he just went home for the weekend. (Apparently he doesn't stay in Moscow much now). We can also wonder if Prigozhin realised his battalion was nowhere near large enough to take Moscow and was headed for disaster (numerically it was much smaller than the regular army forces stationed in Moscow). Or it might have become clear to him that they were not going to be greeted with open arms leading to him being acclaimed as the new president.

I realise all of this is a very western perspective (especially the "no loss of blood" bit) on events we don't much understand. 

For now it's not clear what implications this has for the war in Ukraine, though it can't have done any harm to the Ukrainian cause in the short term if only because of the distraction and the diversion of some forces away from the conflict. 

It's also not clear what implications this has for the next Russian presidential election, due in 2024. For all Putin has established himself as an overwhelmingly powerful leader, his control isn't quite as absolute as in, say, China. Russia has an interesting attachment to at least pretending to have a proper legal system, albeit not one that works in anything like a way that we would consider independent from the executive. But Putin did, for example, stand down as president as required by the Russian constitution after his initial two terms and was nominally prime minister with his placeman Medvedev as president for four years before being relected, probably legitimately if you accept the lack of any opposition allowed to function properly. He then held a referendum enabling amendments to the law allowing him to run for two more terms, potentially until 2036. A curious attachment to due process.

So what next? Will the valkyries (in Norse mythology the choosers of the slain) come for Putin or for Prigozhin and tell them it's time for their soul to go to Valhalla? Will Prigozhin live quietly ever after in Belarus, where Putin can probably make sure he doesn't become an opposition in exile? Or will he find, like Alexei Navalny, that his underpants have been contaminated with novichok or, like Alexander Litvinenko his afternoon tea has been spiked with radioactive polonium?

Actually Putin may be in a stronger position than China's Xi Jinping in some ways. Despite Xi's grip on  the CCP if things got sufficiently shaky I suspect the party is strong enough to tell him "time's up". I don't see anything or anyone in Russia strong enough to say the same to Putin.

And if they could and did it's not clear it would be particularly helpful from our perspective.

Anyway, despite the Ring being some 15 hours long, it seems Richard Wagner cut it short at four acts and we wait for the music to start on the fifth.