Is the Putin System About to Implode? | Opinion

To say that Russian President Vladimir Putin has a lot to answer for would be the understatement of the century. Here is a man who, at least on the surface, was able to keep the oftentimes unwieldy, conflict-ridden Russian political system under his thumb. Factions within the Russian elite were never allowed to grow too powerful, lest it threaten Putin's rule and undermined the picture he has projected to the Russian public for nearly a quarter-century: someone on top of events, feared by allies and enemies alike, who gave orders and expected them to be fully carried out.

Yevgeny Prigozhin's short-lived mutiny, aborted after Putin cut a deal with the Wagner mercenary leader, has punctured the façade.

Sure, Prigozhin was ultimately unsuccessful—he failed to capture Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and chief General Valery Gerasimov, failed to pressure Putin into rearranging the leadership at the defense ministry, and is now sitting in Belarus in exile.

Yet Prigozhin managed to pierce the aura of invincibility Putin has spent two decades building. A rebellious private army, packed to the gills with armored vehicles, tanks, and air defense systems, capturing Rostov-on-Don, a city of 1 million people, without the slightest resistance, isn't a good look for an authoritarian leader under any circumstances—particularly Putin, whose entire shtick revolves around promising the Russian people safety and stability. When thousands of armed men are able to wheel down one of the country's main highways, shoot down six or seven Russian aircraft and come within 200 miles of the capital city, well, you have a problem.

Putin knows he has a problem. Plenty of questions are swirling around in his mind. Was Prigozhin working alone, or did he have accomplishes, active or passive, within the Russian army and security services? On June 27, The New York Times reported that General Sergei Surovikin, who commanded the war in Ukraine for several months before being replaced by the less competent Gerasimov, knew about the Wagner plot ahead of time. How could it be that the Federal Security Services (FSB) didn't pick up Prigozhin's activities, whereas U.S. intelligence agencies apparently did? Should anybody within the Russian security establishment be disciplined, and if so, who? And could Prigozhin pursue a similar operation from neighboring Belarus?

Putin is still Russia's president, but the foundations of his rule have been shaken. Those in the Russian elite who hitched their futures to Putin, either by choice or necessity, might be beginning to ponder alternatives. This is nothing new to Putin, who will likely spend the next few weeks cracking down on opponents, real and perceived, to reinforce his control. He wouldn't be the first autocrat to do it; after foiling a coup attempt, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired thousands of civil servants and arrested over 110,000 people, including members of the military, the judiciary, the police, and the media. There are already reports that the Russian National Guard, tasked with defending Moscow as Prigozhin's men swept north, will be armed with heavy weapons. Surovikin is believed to be detained on suspicion of aiding, or at least knowing about, Prigozhin's antics. Wagner, meanwhile, will no longer be allowed to run independent operations, and whoever takes Prigozhin's place (assuming the entire unit isn't dissolved) will be a weak figure beholden to the Kremlin.

This entire process will play out as Russians inside and outside the country start to think about what life will look like after Putin exits the scene. If in the past discussions about a post-Putin Russia were limited to daydreaming, Prigozhin's mutiny has now turned those daydreams into real conversations. No Russian will speculate about Putin's future in public, but it's hard to imagine discussions aren't taking place among the oligarchs and security men who form the spine of Putin's system. "Mr. Putin today is not who he was last week," Russia analyst Andrei Kolesnikov wrote in The New York Times. "Mr. Prigozhin showed Russians a fleeting glimpse of an alternative future and, by doing so, gave more Russians reason to doubt their leadership."

Other Russia watchers strike a similar tune. Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told the New Yorker this week that Prigozhin may have broken the lid off the Putinist system. "I believe one of the most profound psychological consequences of this mutiny and its resolution is the realization by many within the Russian political class that one can challenge the status quo and escape unscathed, as demonstrated by Prigozhin," she said.

Putin will leave eventually. How he will leave—a coup led by disillusioned Russian generals; Putin dying of natural causes; Putin waking up one morning and deciding to hand power over to a hand-picked successor—is anybody's guess. Secretary of State Antony Blinken would rather not talk about any of this publicly, which is smart for someone in a position of responsibility.

Speculating in the open isn't the same thing as preparing in private. It wouldn't be surprising if the Biden administration asked the U.S. intelligence community for an assessment on how a hypothetical political transition away from Putin would play out, what risks and rewards would be involved, and what could go wrong along the way. Let's all hope this request has been filed because a post-Putin transition, whenever it happens, is unlikely to be a cakewalk resulting in a pacified, democratic Russia. It's more likely to include factional infighting between different generals commanding their own units, a split in the Russian military leadership, and perhaps even some separatism in swaths of Russia that have little connection to Moscow. The internal turmoil could make Russia's October 1993 constitutional crisis look like a picnic in comparison.

Be careful what you wish for.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.