Several experts who follow the war in Ukraine from the West, including some Russian exiles, warned yesterday that Yevgeni Prigozhin’s insurrection may have triggered – or simply accelerated – the process of “implosion” of the Vladimir Putin regime and of the Russian state as we know it in the last decades. Some even point to a scenario of civil war like the one that broke out after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.
For Alexander Melnik, a former Soviet diplomat and professor of geopolitics in France for years, “what is happening in Russia is not a riot, but the collapse of the state.” In statements to La Vanguardia, Melnik used a historical parallel from Roman times: “Bruto Prigozhin stabbed Caesar Putin, unfortunate loser in the Kremlin, who has led his country to suicide.” “Russia implodes and it is Ukraine that wins, due to the abandonment of the adversary,” Melnik concluded.
In an intervention on the French channel BFM-TV, emeritus professor of Sciences Po Bertrand Badie agreed that the war in Ukraine “has set in motion mechanisms for the implosion of the State (in Russia); This is what we are now seeing”.
Other analysts highlight that the great role assumed by Wagner’s mercenaries in the war in Ukraine broke the basic principle of the monopoly of violence in the hands of the State (army and police), be it democratic or authoritarian, the axiom theorized by Max Weber . Prigozhin’s rebellion fully falls within the logic of that break, which had already occurred when the mercenaries supplanted the role that corresponded to the army, at least during the long battle of Bakhmut. Gallagher Fenwick, a Franco-American journalist and author of a biography on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told LCI that “the moment of truth has come” for many, inside and outside the military, to confirm or end their allegiance. to Putin. Also on the LCI channel, which devotes almost all of its programming to the Ukrainian conflict, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, recently returned from Kherson, said that Prigozhin, whom he called a “gangster”, may try to establish a “Bonapartist” regime, driven by for “his excessive ego”.
The newspaper Le Monde , whose paper edition is usually on newsstands shortly after noon, came out late due to the fluid situation in Russia. The newspaper published an editorial, under the title of “Putin’s Russia stripped naked.” According to the newspaper, the latest events should convince the countries that have been close to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine to change their position once and for all, China first, and use its influence to end the war as soon as possible. possible. For Le Monde, in addition to demonstrating the true state of the Russian army, the war “has highlighted today the reality of a State reduced to deadly competition between factions.”
In this highly unstable situation, the G-7 countries, the forum that brings together the richest democracies, are in permanent contact through the ministers of Foreign Affairs and in conversations with the heads of state and government, as confirmed by the Casa Blanca–, to coordinate their response to the Russian crisis. The seriousness of the moment makes it necessary to exchange information and seek a common, prudent position, to avoid taking a false step and not giving Putin a pretext to carry out some dangerous maneuver, such as a flight forward that involves the West.
Retired general and former US presidential hopeful Wesley Clark, who was NATO’s supreme commander during the Kosovo war, warned of the risk. In an interview with CNN, he raised the possibility that Putin, faced with the threat of ouster, would accuse the West of being behind it and make some near-suicidal decision, such as putting nuclear forces on standby or invading a Baltic republic.
