When Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner paramilitary group marched on Moscow, weapons in hand, in the middle of the war against Ukraine, shooting down Russian army helicopters, Vladimir Putin seemed vulnerable as never before in a quarter of a century in power.
A year later, the Russian president seems at the peak of his power.
Prigozhin the mutineer died in a suspicious plane accident two months after his revolt of June 23-24, 2023. His group was de facto refounded and placed under the authority of the Ministry of Defense, the same one as the rebels criticized for its corruption, its incompetence and the slowness of its logistics.
Then, Vladimir Putin attacked the ministry executives in the spring of 2024, even if it meant echoing the demands of the mutineers.
Presented as a clean-cut operation against corruption and not as a purge, this initiative landed generals and a deputy minister, Timur Ivanov, in prison. Others were sacked.
“There is no one disloyal to Putin anymore,” notes Nikolai Petrov, researcher at Chatham House, a British analysis center banned in Russia.
The Russian president “exercises direct and constant control over all the most important actors,” he continues. There is no longer any question of allowing anyone the autonomy that Prigojine had, or of appointing a soldier capable of controlling the loyalty of the troops.
Big cleaning
Sergei Shoigu, his loyal Minister of Defense, is transferred to a prestigious but much less prominent post.
Mr. Putin entrusted the ministry to a technocrat, the economist Andrei Beloussov. Among the latter’s deputies, the Russian president places a cousin, Anna Tsiviliova, and Pavel Fradkov, son of the former prime minister and former head of the foreign intelligence services (SVR) Mikhail Fradkov.
“The military corporation is among those which in theory could play a more political role (…) and Putin’s method was to not let anyone from it become the head of the corporation,” summarizes Mr. Petrov.
The message sent is also that he is not cleaning up the Ministry of Defense because of the political-military pressure exerted by Wagner, but by choice and necessity.
Because if Moscow has had the initiative on the battlefield since the fall, Russia remains entangled in a war that it believed it could win in a few days. And it fails to make a breakthrough, despite its advantage in men and weapons.
Reorganizing the military and shaping an effective war economy for years of confrontation with the West is the priority.
“The fact that (Putin) can take these measures, attacking the interests and income of senior military officials, is proof of his strength, not his weakness,” notes Nigel Gould-Davies, a researcher specializing in Russia. at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Just before this great cleanup, the master of the Kremlin also consolidated his all-power with a tailor-made victory in the presidential election in March, with 87% of the votes.
A month earlier his number one enemy, the opponent Alexeï Navalny, died in murky conditions in his prison in the Arctic, without this sparking mass protests in the country.
Kowtow
The election shows that he can “concoctate whatever he wants”, notes Mr. Gould-Davies, “the expression of his domination is that he can do anything”.
“Putin’s power is more personal than ever,” concludes the expert.
On the political front, the opposition has quite simply been eradicated within the country and each week brings its litany of condemnations of ordinary citizens, opponents or journalists who have criticized the regime or who have publicly mentioned the abuses of which the regime is accused. Russia in Ukraine.
“Between the repressive measures and the exemplary prison sentences imposed on various people, he intimidated and brought into line a large part of the population,” summarizes Mr. Gould-Davies.
The expert notes that we should not confuse absence of distrust with enthusiasm.
Moreover, a year ago, onlookers applauded Wagner’s troops who had taken control, without shooting, of the headquarters of the Russian army for the invasion of Ukraine in the city of Rostov-on-le -Don.
“There is no large-scale enthusiasm for Putin or the war,” says Mr. Gould-Davies, but “the lessons of the Wagner mutiny have been learned and make it less likely that he will be challenged to this way in the future.