This morning,
Wagner mercenary
fighters are steadily
withdrawing from the Volga
region after mercenary
chief Yevgeny
Prigozhin
agreed to back down
from his armed insurrection.
But for embattled Russian
President Vladimir Putin,
this crisis could have a lasting effect
on his ability to lead Russia
here with this right
now, as Washington Post opinion columnist
Max Boot, he has a new op ed
this morning entitled
Putin Finally Learned His Lesson.
Max, so much.
Thanks so much for joining us
in your column.
A very important, significant,
significant column indeed.
You write
this, Putin is learning
what so many tyrants
have learned before him.
When you unleash the dogs of war,
they can come back to bite you.
How much is this
armed rebellion, do you believe, Max,
actually weakened Putin
I think it's hard
to say, Wolf,
exactly how much it has weakened Putin,
but it's pretty clear
that it has because,
you know,
he his role depends
on this aura of absolute power.
The man that nobody can challenge,
anybody who does
lines up dead or in jail.
But you just saw in the last few days
that Prigozhin did,
in fact, challenge Putin.
And we had this amazing
spectacle of these mutinous
mercenary troops marching on Moscow.
And eventually they turned back,
but they didn't turn back
because they were smashed
by the Russian military.
In fact,
there was
very little indication
of the Russian military
even being willing
to fight the Wagner troops.
They were ultimately turned back
because of a deal
brokered by Putin's sidekick,
Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.
And by all accounts,
Prigozhin gets out of this.
He's not he's not going to a prison cell.
He's not going six feet under.
He's going to Belarus.
And, you know,
the fighters that he led
will get an amnesty.
So I think this was clearly
a sign
of the weakness of the Putin regime.
It's not quite as solid
as it seems from the outside
Yeah, good point.
How badly has Putin misstepped
by allowing Prigozhin to accrue
so much power?
pro-Russians attacks
on the Russian Defense Ministry
have been ramping up,
as we all know, for months.
Yeah, this is kind of the way
that Putin has managed
this whole regime
over two decades, that
he always has competing power centers.
He's always playing oligarchs off
against one another.
Different chieftains
within the government
against one another.
And he's kind of the ultimate arbiter
of decision making.
But I think the model
has been breaking down
under the pressure of this losing war.
And remember, Russia is losing this war.
They are suffering
horrifying casualties,
the likes of which
they have not seen since World War two
and for very little gain, that
that's kind of what you would expect
to happen
in the cauldron of a losing war, is
that there is a lot of dissatisfaction,
there's a lot of grumbling
and you're seeing that
that competition
between Wagner
and the Russian defense ministry,
it got out of control.
Putin could not keep a lid on it anymore.
And all of a sudden
you know,
this Frankenstein monster,
the Wagner group that he had created,
turned on him and started marching
towards the Russian Capitol.
So I think clearly that shows
that Putin
is not as in control of the situation
as he would like to think,
which is absolutely true.
So where does this leave,
Max, to the Wagner group?
Which has been, as we all know, critical
to Putin's war in Ukraine
and also, by the way,
to Russian operations
elsewhere around the world,
including specifically
in the Middle East and Africa,
That's a great question, Wolf.
And I think the answer is unclear,
at least it's unclear to me
what will happen to the Wagner group.
I mean,
you know,
Prigozhin is still going to be around.
He's only in Belarus
that's not that far away.
He can easily run the Wagner
group from Belarus.
There was
there was talk about
having the Wagner
fighters were loyal
to the Russian defense ministry.
But what that means in practice
in terms of operational control
of those fighters, it's very unclear.
I will say this, Wolf, that if
the Wagner group
is no longer on the front
lines, on the zero line in Ukraine,
I think that'll be a significant blow
to the Russian war effort,
because the Wagner troops
have been some of the most determined
and the ones who are willing to suffer
horrifying casualties
in Putin's
brutal cause, much more
so than the regular troops or,
you know, conscripts and
and have low morale.
So, you know,
whatever happens,
I think this is going to lead
to less effective Russian military.
And the Russian military already
wasn't that effective.
So I think,
you know,
we it's very hard
to judge the political ramifications
because we don't know
exactly what's going to happen
with the Wagner group.
But
I think this does create the potential
for for giving the Ukrainians
an advantage
as they pressed forward with
their counteroffensive.
Yeah, I suspect you're right.
What are the implications,
Max, of Putin being so deeply, deeply
embarrassed out there
on the global stage?
Well, again,
I think this dance, his aura
of of being this
the Superman and in fact,
I think that aura has already
been in decline
over the past 16 months because,
you know,
everybody had more respect
and fear for Putin
before the Ukrainian invasion
than after the Ukrainian invasion,
because it's revealed
the mass of deficiencies
in his and his military forces
that they have been ground to a halt
and in fact, have been pushed back
in many areas
by the ragtag Ukrainian military.
So, you know,
I don't think that Putin
is going
to inspire
quite as much fear in the future
as he has in the past.
And I think what this
also indicates is that,
you know, it's very possible
that time is actually on
the side of the Ukrainians
because, you know, the
the conventional wisdom has been
that time is on Russia's side
because it's a larger country.
Ukraine is dependent on outside help.
And the other countries
may lose interest in supporting Ukraine.
But in fact,
I think what this is revealing,
Wolf, is something incredibly important,
which is
the strength of democracy at war,
and that's Ukraine.
They have a democratically elected
leader,
whereas near unanimous support,
the Ukrainian people are united behind
this war effort.
Whereas in Russia,
you know, their surface
support for the war,
but very little enthusiasm
and certainly no enthusiasm
for the Putin regime.
Putin engender fear,
but he doesn't engender
a love or loyalty.
And you saw that
as soon as the Wagner
troops challenged him,
most of the population
and the Russian armed forces
kind of stood on the sidelines.
They weren't mobilizing to save Putin.
So I think, you know,
I think that shows you
something very important
about the hidden fragility
of a dictatorship
and the hidden strength of
a democracy like Ukraine.
Yeah.
Excellent, excellent analysis.
Max Boot, thank you.