The failed coup in Russia has turned Putin into a lame duck

On June 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chef and the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin staged an almost-successful coup. In doing so, he effectively annihilated the notion that Putin can control his own country.

How was Prigozhin able to move so quickly? First, take note of a message sent by Prigozhin’s deputy, Andrey Troshev, to all army units in southern Russia. It says that “from June 21 to July 5, Wagner will be moving its units” to Russia to “sign an agreement with Russian security structure (not a Ministry of Defense).” Vladimir Osechkin of Gulagu.net, a specialist in all things Wagner, vouches for its authenticity.

This is how Wagner managed so quickly to capture Rostov, the main logistical hub for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Prigozhin was moving units even before he announced his rebellion.

Vladimir Osechkin also claims that the mercenaries were told they were marching “to help Putin,” who wants to fire the minister of defense but needs some clout. To an outsider, this level of deception may seem psychotic, but anybody who studied Prigozhin’s troll farms will recognize his signature style.

It appears that Prigozhin’s first goal was to capture the Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu in his Rostov headquarters. But Shoigu fled. The two men left behind to parlay with Prigozhin included Russian military intelligence (GRU) General Vladimir Alekseev.

Alekseev, a native of Ukraine, is one of the masterminds of this war. He is rumored to be the top spy overseeing Russian intelligence operations in the West, including the Skripal poisoning. He is also the one who created Wagner. Its current military commander, Dmitry Utkin, is his personal friend.

Alekseev seemed to be the emissary of Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Security Council and the man who was left by Putin to fight the rebels, while Putin went off to Saint Petersburg to watch his favorite water festival from the board of a new yacht. It would have been wise to treat such a man with respect. Instead, Prigozhin exhibited him in a video as a captured prize.

Prigozhin remained at the Rostov headquarters while Utkin marched on to Moscow. Utkin is a brilliant commander. He is also a man who has tattooed himself with Nazi shoulder straps and named his unit after Hitler’s favorite composer.

By this time, the coup was doomed. The Federal Security Service (FSB) had been alerted by June 22 at the latest. This tallies with Christo Grozev of Bellingcat’s report of a frantic surge of communication between the FSB, the GRU and the Federal Protective Service. If the Wagner chief expected the FSB to take his side, he was deceived.

According to my sources, the FSB had lists of locals who served in Wagner. These people were apprehended immediately after Prigozhin struck. Meanwhile, some 70 miles from Moscow, where the Oka River crosses the Rostov highway and adjacent roads, five bridges across the river were blocked and loaded with explosives with plenty of troops lying in wait. It would have been a bloodbath.

It appears that Patrushev was well-prepared for the coup, albeit in a peculiar way. Were Prigozhin crushed at Oka, this would have demonstrated the utter cluelessness of President Putin and made Patrushev the biggest guy in the city. Patrushev is the closest friend of Putin, a head of what may be called “the deep KGB,” and one of the only two people who reputedly had access to Putin in his bunker. He has also been spouting conspiracy theories left and right, talking of George Soros controlling European parliaments and U.S. corporations swatting “four U.S. presidents” like flies.

But Patrushev wasn’t the ultimate victor because Prigozhin stopped before reaching the river. The man who talked him into stopping was Alexei Dyumin, the governor of the Tula region and an ally to Yury Kovalchuk, a billionaire and Putin’s second-closest friend, reputedly a main influence behind the Ukraine war with truly bizarre ideas. His brother says the Western elites are currently engaged in creating genetically modified “serving people” and suppressing Western countries’ birthrates through “gay propaganda.”

It wasn’t simply stopping Prigozhin, it was more about preventing Patrushev’s triumph. Putin was as much as non-existent in all this. In fact, the only explanation for him letting “the traitor” live is the copious amount of blackmail Prigozhin can possess. After all, the guy was the head of Putin’s private army, first in Ukraine and later in Africa. There should be some pretty heavy stuff over there, not your usual run-of-the-mill corruption.

This all may seem highly convoluted and a conspiracy theory. Point is, all these people are ardent conspiracy theorists. And conspiracy theorists at the helm of security and military services engage in conspiracies that never pan out as planned.

The good news is that Prigozhin and Putin both lost. The bad news is that the people who benefited the most and stand to control post-Putin Russia are, frankly, nuts.

Did I mention that Alexei Dyumin’s biggest qualification for his current governor’s job is that he was Putin’s bodyguard? This is what qualified him to parlay with Putin’s chef.

Russia’s lay bureaucracy is surprisingly sound. Its state security elite, on the other hand, is the three-ring circus described above. Putin created it in his image, and now he reaps what he sowed.

Perhaps the telling fact is that even these crazy guys want to stop the war. Either way, it’s the biggest cliffhanger in the Ukraine series so far. And Putin looks like a fruit ripe for plucking, but not before he loses his war. That way, whoever survives can safely pin the military failures on him.

Yulia Latynina, a journalist and a writer, worked for Echo of Moscow radio station and the Novaya Gazeta newspaper until they were shut down as part of the current war in Ukraine. She is a recipient of the U.S. State Department’s Defender of Freedom award.