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"When you let out the dogs of war, they come back to bite you." Putin finally learned the lesson that all tyrants learn

2023-06-25 18:15:08Pikëpamje SHKRUAR NGA WASHINGTON POST
"When you let out the dogs of war, they come back to bite you." Putin
A member of the mercenary group Wagner poses with a Russian woman on a street in downtown Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on Saturday

By Max Boot*

Russian President Vladimir Putin is learning what many other tyrants have learned before him: When you unleash the dogs of war, they come back to bite you. When Russia's strongman sent his troops to Kiev, he never imagined that 16 months later, Wagner's mercenaries would march on Moscow.

But even Napoleon did not imagine that the invasion of Russia would lead him to asylum and restructure the entire French monarchy. Hitler never thought that the invasion of Poland would lead to his own suicide and the division of Germany. Saddam Hussein also never thought that the invasion of Kuwait would lead to the defeat and subsequent death of his regime.

War is a volatile and dangerous business, the consequences of which are never clearly seen and never successfully enjoyed. The illusion of a dictator's control usually crumbles on the battlefield, especially in a protracted war like the one in Ukraine.

Many analysts have assumed that time was on Putin's side in this fight because Russia is so much bigger than Ukraine and because Ukraine is so dependent on external support from countries that they may lack the patience to stay the course. But we are now seeing that time may be on Ukraine's side after all, because its government was democratically elected and enjoys the near-unanimous support of its people to wage a war of territorial defense. Putin's unelected criminal regime, on the other hand, intimidates the Russian people into submission, but commands no loyalty or love.

Like many dictatorships, Putin's regime turns out to be more fragile than it appears from the outside. He has always relied on his ability to manage competing centers of power, pitting oligarchs (and various branches of government) against each other so that he is the final arbiter of decision-making. This model worked for two decades, but it is breaking down under the pressure of a losing war that is destroying and destroying the Russian military.

In February, US intelligence estimated that Russia had suffered at least 35,000 soldiers killed in action and at least 154,000 wounded, while the open-source intelligence site Oryx estimated that Russia had lost more than 2,000 tanks and nearly 900 armored vehicles. combative.

Russia has not seen such losses since World War II. The rapid withdrawal of Russian troops - and their apparent incompetence - forced Putin to rely more on the Wagner Group, the private military company founded by Yevgeniy Prigozhin. A criminal who spent time in prison in the Soviet Union in the 1980s for armed robbery and other offenses, Prigozhin opened a hot dog stand after getting out and parlayed that into a successful catering business that supplied food to the Russian military. This led to a nickname he hates: "Putin's Chef". Soon, he was cooking up a lot of trouble: His Internet Research Agency became a tool of Russian disinformation,

When Putin decided in 2014 to invade Crimea and foment an insurgency in eastern Ukraine, Wagner – full of former special forces operatives from the Russian military – was one of the instruments he used. Wagner wasn't initially at the forefront of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but the failures of the Russian military gave Prigozhin an opening to essentially grab market share from the Russian Ministry of Defense. Putin's boss cooked up a particularly ruthless and daring scheme by recruiting convicts from Russian prisons to use in human wave attacks. To keep the criminals in line, he distributed a film of an alleged deserter being executed by a blow to the head.

Wagner's attacks on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut became the main focus of Russia's stalled winter offensive. Eventually, Prigozhin's men took the city, but only at a staggering cost: American intelligence estimated that, between December and May alone, more than 20,000 Russian troops were killed and 80,000 wounded, mostly in Bakhmut.

As Prigozhin grew more powerful, that power seemed to go to his head, and he began releasing videos in which he mocked Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, as cowards and criminals. He accused them of not providing enough artillery shells for his forces, ignoring the fact that the Russian military has limited reserves and is understood to prioritize its own forces. "Because of their whims, five times more boys than were supposed to die have died," Prigozhin said in a video filmed on May 20 in Bakhmut. "They will bear responsibility for their actions, which in Russian are called crimes."

Putin didn't seem to mind much; he probably imagined that a race to make military progress in Ukraine would work to his advantage. But in recent days, the rivalry between Wagner and the Ministry of Defense has spiraled out of control. Earlier this month, Prigozhin's forces captured a Russian officer whom he publicly accused of firing on a Wagner convoy. On Friday, Prigozhin accused the Russian military of attacking a Wagner camp, resulting in many casualties, and, referring to Shoigu, said: "This scum will stop!" Russia's Federal Security Service responded late Friday by issuing an arrest warrant for Prigozhin for "inciting armed rebellion."

Prigozhin did not wait to be arrested. Like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, his men marched into Rostov-on-Don on Saturday and captured the Russian military headquarters there without a fight. Later in the day, a Wagner convoy left for Moscow amid reports of roadblocks to the capital.

"In the coming hours, the loyalty of the Russian security forces, and especially the Russian National Guard, will be the key to how the crisis will develop," the British Ministry of Defense said. "This represents the most important challenge for the Russian state in recent times."

Faced with this sudden threat, Putin went so far as to invoke the Russian Revolution of 1917, when, he said, "intrigues, quarrels and politics behind the backs of the army and the people resulted in a great shock, in the destruction of the army and the fall of the state." Of course, he was implicitly comparing himself to Czar Nicholas II, who made the ill-fated decision to enter World War I and who caused a military mutiny with his failures on the battlefield.

On Saturday evening, after the intercession of President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Prigozhin called off his advance about 120 miles from Moscow, so it appears that Putin may survive this crisis. As part of this deal, criminal charges against Prigozhin will be dropped and he will go to Belarus. Members of the Wagner Group who did not participate in the revolt will sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry, but the company's fate remains unclear.

However, the Wagner crisis has exposed the hidden instability of the Putin regime and shaken its aura of power. It may yet create opportunities for a Ukrainian counteroffensive that, so far, has only been in the works. If the Russians are distracted by infighting, Ukraine may have the opportunity to score more successes on the battlefield – and this in turn could further undermine Putin's power.

There is a lesson here for all future tyrants who might think of launching wars of aggression. Are you paying attention, Xi Jinping?

*Historian/ Source: Washington Post


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