We've just learned that Vladimir Putin met with Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin just five days after the latter's June 23 aborted rebellion. The meeting evinces just how vulnerable Putin feels he still is to the Wagner Group's military power.
The Russian president prizes public displays of loyalty as an almost sacrosanct imperative. Prigozhin shredded that expectation with his coup, damaging Putin's presentation of power more than anyone ever has. Putin's rhetorical response to the coup attempt reflected his fury and concern: He lambasted Prigozhin as a treasonous enemy of the Russian people. That Putin would then host Prigozhin and other Wagner commanders at the Kremlin tells a different story.
The Kremlin's excuse for the utter incongruity between Putin's post-coup rhetoric and thereafter hosting of Prigozhin is patently ridiculous. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov played down the meeting, suggesting it was a business formality rather than a grand concession to a coup plotter. According to Peskov, Prigozhin simply"gave assessment to the [coup attempt].
"Putin made this assessment and made his choice — a choice in favor of pragmatism, and not some formal standards ... Various questions still remain open, the main of which looks like this: where are the guarantees that the [coup attempt] will not be repeated?"Indeed. There are no such guarantees, nor does Putin have obvious means of imposing them on Prigozhin. If the Russian leader had those means, he would have already applied them.
The basic truth is that Prigozhin retains both his military power and an associated, if far less casual, measure of Russian political capital. Top line: Putin's government is significantly less stable than it appears.
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