Our Dutch correspondent H. Numan sends his take on the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

The Mexican standoff

by H. Numan

The last couple of days were very Chinese: ‘may you live in interesting times‘. Yevgeny Prigozhin started a revolt that failed within two days. Not that he had much chance of succeeding. The situation is foggy; nobody has any idea what is going on there. Those who do know don’t speak. All we can do is guess. This situation is known as a Mexican standoff. Both parties openly stated their need to kill the other, but both lack the means to do it.

Vladimir Putin declared Prigozhin an enemy of the state, but later withdrew that. Provided Prigozhin went into exile. He duly obliged by going into exile in Belorussia. He’s currently staying in a high rise hotel with windows that cannot be opened. In other words, he knows he’s a marked man. Given what he said in the past about Putin the Russian Government, I can’t blame him. What surprises me most is how he could get away with his big mouth. People have been falling out of windows for much less.

Not only Prigozhin is in mortal danger; so is Putin. His mercenary commander revolted and he couldn’t stamp it out immediately. That is deadly in any autocracy. Such a Mexican standoff is very unlikely to last for long. Not in Russia. Either Putin offs Prigozhin, or Prigozhin offs Putin. I’m not placing any bets here. It’s too murky at the moment.

Don’t think for a moment Prigozhin is a reasonable alternative to Putin. First of all, Prigozhin has a long criminal record for violent crimes. Putin isn’t exactly squeaky clean, but he restricted himself to white collar crimes: embezzlement, corruption and some discrete murders, mainly. Prigozhin is different. When he says he’ll break your fingers, he will. That’s why he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He got out after serving nine years.

Politically speaking he stands far, far, far to the right of Putin. Supposing he ends the Mexican standoff successfully, we’re in a much worse position. Putin threatens with nukes, but likely won’t use them. Two reasons: first, he was in the team that solved the nuclear crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was one of the people who decided that going out with a bang wasn’t a viable option. Second, he knows using nukes wouldn’t work. A tactical nuke somewhere in Ukraine wouldn’t force Ukraine to surrender and would trigger a NATO response.

Prigozhin is different. He yearns for maximum violence. Putin wants to conquer Ukraine, and integrate it into Russia. Prigozhin wants to conquer Ukraine too, but just the territory. The Ukrainian people he sees as fertilizer. Yes, you can take that literally. He’s head of the Wagner Private Military Company. Where do you think the name Wagner comes from? The famous composer, Hitler’s favorite. The name was coined by Dmitry Utkin, an avowed Hitler fan and a real neo-nazi. Not a slur, like ‘President Zelensky is a neo-nazi’. That’s just an insult. It’s kind of difficult for a Jew to be neo-nazi. If your number 2 is a real neo-nazi, and you allow him to name your organization Wagner, I’m not entirely convinced that’s because Prigozhin is an opera aficionado.

Where Putin might use a nuke when pressed, Prigozhin will use a nuke, as soon as he can. That’s how violent criminals normally work. They don’t make empty threats. Putin is like Reinhart Heydrich: cold, calculating, merciless. Prigozhin is more like Al Capone: cold, ruthless and prone to extreme violence.

Which brings me to this war in general. It’s amazing how consistent it is historically. Every ruler of Russia would act exactly the same. Peter and Catherine the Great, Nicholas II (currently an orthodox saint!), Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and now Putin. The whole lot of them.

When seriously threatened, they all reacted with extreme violence. Maybe not immediately, but they did eventually. Peter the Great exterminated every streltsy and their entire families in the Streltsy Revolt. Not immediately, but as soon as he could. He wasn’t the Great then. More like Peter the Young. Their heads were placed on pikes on the battlements of the Kremlin. I expect Prigozhin and his adherents will share the same faith. Great purges are not exclusively Stalin’s prerogative.

They all worked to extend and secure Russia’s borders as far as possible. The cost in human lives is always irrelevant. Nor did time matter very much. It took Peter the Great decades to conquer the Swedish territory where he planned his new capital Saint Petersburg to be. Once he secured it, many thousands died building that capital. The conquest of Ukraine took centuries.

This is the Second Crimean War. The first one was almost the same clown show. Russia had some — but not a lot of — modern weapons and was completely outclassed by British, French, Turkish and Sardinian forces. It lasted two and a half year mainly because Russia’s enemies were almost as incompetent. Charge of the Light Brigade, anyone? Even so, Russia had bigger clowns and lost that war. Not much has changed. Sometimes the Russian army is to be feared, but more often it’s to be ridiculed. Their strength rests in numbers and an utter disregard for human suffering.

Russia’s policy over the centuries has always been the same: try to secure natural borders and warm-water ports. The cost in human lives doesn’t matter. A defeat, unfortunate as it is, doesn’t matter, either. It may cost the autocrat of the day his head or crown, but it’s only a temporary setback. Eventually they will win. The defeat is used to strengthen the army and resupply for a next attempt. Russia always comes back, especially if it matters strategically.

Even if some kind of a peace agreement can be reached with Ukraine, it will be just another temporary setback. Control over Ukraine is too important for them. It won’t happen immediately, depending on the circumstances. If Putin eradicates Prigozhin and the Wagner mercenaries, he’ll need time to regroup. Putin is old, 70 years. Russia can’t make up their losses in his lifetime. No matter, the next autocrat will take the baton from him.

If — God forbid — Prigozhin offs Putin, prepare for Armageddon. He’ll blow up the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, perhaps vaporize Kiev or Kherson just to show he means business. He has been screaming for that kind of solution as soon as the war began to fail for Russia.

A peace solution is utterly impossible because of what Putin did: he annexed parts of Ukraine he didn’t even fully occupy (Zaporizhia, Kherson and Donbass) and changed the constitution to include them. Again, this is nothing new. Peter the Great did exactly the same with the Saint Petersburg territory. Okay, he didn’t write it in a constitution because they didn’t have one at the time. But he did formally declare it an integral part of the Russian empire, right from the start of hostilities. It guaranteed decades of war. But it also rallied his people to fight for Mother Russia. In the end Russia won that battle. Russia never gives up.

On the other side, Ukraine is no longer part of Russia, and more importantly: they feel that way. After the Ukrainians gained independence, they slowly but surely shifted away from Russia. Flemish people don’t like to be seen as the little brothers of Holland. Neither do Ukrainians like to be seen as Russia’s little brothers. The very heavy-handed approach and the utter untrustworthiness of the Russians didn’t endear them to Ukrainians. In plebiscites before the Russian take over of Crimea, Luhansk and Donbas the population overwhelmingly voted to remain Ukrainian. Yes, also the Russian speakers. It simply makes more sense. Their choice is to join the EU and the West and become rich(er), or join Russia and remain poor forever.

Ukraine cannot afford to lose the now-occupied parts of their country. Without Crimea Ukraine is a landlocked country depending entirely on the goodwill of Russia for international trade. Without Luhansk and Donbas they don’t have much industry. Any peace agreement — and make no mistake, Russia will demand keeping those territories — is impossible. What’s left of Ukraine would be taken over by Russia within a decade. Possibly within five years. Which is exactly what Putin would like, given the fact that the war at the moment is unwinnable for him.

I’m pretty certain this war will last for years to come. Putin likely won’t see the end of it. Hopefully neither will Prigozhin (as soon as possible, please!) Putin can’t retreat without losing everything. He already did, when Sweden and Finland joined NATO. Sweden isn’t a member yet, but they will be. Ukraine could have been a new Finland in perpetual neutrality. If not for Putin… However, as it stands now, Russia will not give up anything unless forced to at gunpoint. Even then as little as possible, and they will come back. That’s not Putin dictating his terms, but history. Russia never gives in easily, and gives up as little as possible.

Prigozhin is a loose cannon. His days are numbered. Any autocrat worth the title has to kill him, as gruesomely and publicly as possible. Almost certainly in a great purge. If anything, Russia always has the institutions for it. Peter the Great didn’t have a GRU or KGB, but purged nevertheless. Putin has the FSB and will purge Prigozhin. Again, it’s nothing personal (probably). It’s history.

— H. Numan