OPINION:
The June 23-25 attempted coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin by Wagner Group creator and commander Yevgeny Prigozhin — a former close Putin ally — raised some important questions.
Why was it ended so suddenly? How much was Mr. Putin weakened? Most importantly, what should we expect Mr. Putin to do next?
The end of the coup attempt came so suddenly that some analysts say the whole exercise was “maskirovka,” a Russian word for deception, intended to benefit Mr. Putin. It wasn’t, because it made Mr. Putin look weak.
Mr. Putin has, for years, carefully crafted his tough-guy image. While then-President Barack Obama was dishing with the girls on “The View,” Mr. Putin was splitting wood, bare-chested.
That image was shattered when, in the face of the coup attempt, Mr. Putin fled Moscow for St. Petersburg while Mr. Prigozhin’s troops were advancing on Moscow without opposition.
There are many theories why Mr. Prigozhin ended the coup so suddenly and readily accepted exile in Belarus. One theory, which seems most likely, begins with the condemnation of the coup by Russia’s Security Service, the FSB, almost immediately after it began.
The FSB probably told Mr. Prigozhin that it would kill his wife and children, uncles, aunts and cousins and all of their kids if he continued. He would have naturally chosen to quit.
The coup attempt failed, Mr. Putin is absorbing Wagner troops into the Russian army and Mr. Prighozin is in exile. But Mr. Prigozhin’s Wagner recruiting station in Murmansk, according to a report in The Barents Observer, a Norway-based online news outlet, is still operating.
Meanwhile, the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive is stalled, and most of Russia’s top generals, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, are back in business. Mr. Putin has been weakened, but not substantially.
What will he do next?
To figure that out, we have to first understand a bit about Alexander Dugin, a radical Russian political theorist whose works have evidently influenced Mr. Putin more than any other’s.
Mr. Dugin has been called “Putin’s philosopher,” which is probably about right. Mr. Putin’s actions parallel Mr. Dugin’s writings too closely for it to be coincidental.
Much has been written about Mr. Dugin, but translations of his books and articles into English are scarce. I found a partial translation of his 1997 “Foundations of Geopolitics” in a 2018 master’s thesis by Grant Scott Fellows, “The Foundations of Aleksandr Dugin’s Geopolitics: Montage Fascism and Eurasianism on Blowback.”
Mr. Putin’s latest foreign policy concept paper, issued in March, says that Russia is “a unique country-civilization and a vast Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power.” That is the primary concept explained in Mr. Dugin’s “The Foundations of Geopolitics.”
Mr. Dugin writes in a dense academic style, but his neofascist views and antisemitism are quite clear, as is his view of Russia’s future. In “Foundations,” he wrote of a “New Empire” dominated by “Eurasians,” i.e., Russians:
“The New Empire, the construction of which would be a global response, is the planetary civilizational mission of the Russian people. … This New Empire, the Eurasian Empire, will have completely differentiated structures within which consisting of separate parts of varying degrees of interdependence and integration.”
He wrote that the New Empire will not be the Russian empire or the Soviet empire, but something greater.
According to Mr. Dugin, “Greater Russia, for example, can be considered like a separate people or even ‘country’ within the framework of the Russian Empire together with Ukrainians, Belorussians, possibly the Serbs, and so on.”
He believes in the Slavic peoples’ superiority.
About Ukraine, he wrote in “Foundations” that “Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness. … Its certain territorial ambitions represent an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics.”
In 2005, Mr. Putin said, “First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.” He has since done his best to restore a Russian empire.
But Mr. Dugin’s “Foundations” says that if Ukraine is not retaken, Mr. Putin may as well not bother with the rest.
Mr. Dugin’s description of Russia’s — Eurasia’s — goal is the same as Mr. Putin’s: to restore Russian hegemony over eastern Europe and more.
He wrote, “Moscow’s objective of wresting control of Europe from the USA (NATO), contributing to its unity strengthening integrative connections with central Europe under the sign of a basic external political axis of Berlin-Moscow.”
Wherever Mr. Putin goes from here is, after the Prigozhin attempted coup, will not deviate much from the Duginist theories. He is weakened, but not substantially.
Mr. Putin is faced with a continued stalemate in Ukraine. He has, by his other statements and actions, made the war in Ukraine personally existential. His reign cannot continue without conquest of Ukraine.
That leaves him only two options.
Mr. Putin can continue the war on Ukraine at its present level as long as the Russian economy can sustain it. He must plan on continuing it until after our 2024 election when support for Ukraine will probably dwindle.
Or he could use tactical nuclear weapons to accelerate his to conquest of that nation. With the rebuff so far of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Mr. Putin can afford to wait.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.
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