Why Putin is Weaker than ever

If you missed yesterday’s letter, it is key to understanding the context of this one. You can read it here.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine hasn't gone well.

The Russian military first failed to capture the capital Kyiv, and within a few months, only controlled parts of the east and south of Ukraine.

For Putin, these failures pose a huge risk to his power by possibly lowering his inner circle's confidence in his ability and increasing the risk that one of them might try and overthrow him.

So Putin has doubled down on his playbook.

He had FSB leaders arrested for providing bad intelligence in the lead up to the invasion.

He fired more than 100 members of the National Guard, including its second-in-command, and fired several military generals.

For Prigozhin though, this was good news.

He saw this opportunity for Wagner to be presented as the competent ones.

Prigozhin swelled Wagner's ranks by recruiting men from Russia's prisons, then pushed them to the front of key battles in Ukraine, most notably in the town of Bakhmut.

There, Wagner's reported to have used brutal tactics and suffered tens of thousands of killed and wounded.

But on May 20th, 2023, they captured it.

Wagner's success led it to overlap more with the Russian military, while also elevating Prigozhin into Putin's inner circle, where he began to publicly criticize the military leaders.

Prigozhin has come out publicly saying things that no one else could get away with saying in Russia.

But Putin didn't step in to stop Prigozhin because the feud benefited him.

He could play the two sides off of one another, thus using each of them to limit the other and in a way, can disperse some of that pressure from landing on him.

So Putin allowed the feud to escalate.

Finally, in June, 2023, Putin's military leader struck back by announcing they would absorb Wagner's troops, essentially cutting off Prigozhin from the thing that gave him wealth and access to Putin.

So on June 23rd, 2023, in order to survive, Prigozhin rebelled.

As his forces raced towards Moscow, Prigozhin claimed he was planning to remove just Russia's military leaders, but Putin was forced to go on national television and call Prigozhin a traitor.

For the first time, the world could see that Putin didn't have total control and it was because the feuds he stoked between his subordinates were backfiring on him.

This was someone close to him who he had trusted, that he had given a surprisingly long leash to.

That shock factor was really part of what gave this such a large impact.

Just before reaching Moscow, Prigozhin agreed to surrender, but his rebellion revealed a much bigger problem for Putin.

His wall of security services did not appear to try and stop Wagner's mutiny, and many of Putin's top military and security service leaders were nowhere to be seen.

We did have evidence that some of the intelligence services were aware that Prigozhin was planning something, but it was unclear as why actions weren't taken to really stop the advance before it could begin.

This wall has for years successfully defended him from outside challengers, but it didn't appear totally willing to stop one from coming from the inside.

It's a sign that Putin's grip on power could be weaker than ever before.

Equally suspicious is that Putin hasn't purged the security services for their inaction, and he's reportedly met with Prigozhin and Wagner repeatedly since their mutiny.

That means for the time being, the war in Ukraine will continue to put pressure on Putin's leadership, but his wall of protection remains unchanged, cracks and all.