When I saw the first images of armed men in ragtag uniforms taking over the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Saturday morning, I was immediately reminded of the "little green men" who began showing up in cities in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. Like the Russian troops and soldiers-of-fortune who began the Kremlin's covert invasion of Ukraine, the fighters in Rostov displayed no insignia as they seized key buildings, including the headquarters of Russia's Southern Military District. Just as in Ukraine nine years ago, there was no resistance from local law enforcement officers, who chose life over a fight with determined gunmen.
This weekend's lightning takeover of Rostov by the Wagner mercenary group was the first step in an armed mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the ex-con who rose to become Russia's most infamous battlefield commander. From there, the Wagner forces began a march on Moscow until Prigozhin abruptly ordered his men to turn around and return to their bases. In the space of 24 hours, the full madness of Vladimir Putin's dictatorship was on display. The blowback of his attack on Ukraine was symbolized by a Wagner tank, marked with the letter "Z," which stands for the Kremlin's war effort, pointing not at Ukrainians but other Russians.
Prigozhin said his beef was with the military leadership, which he accused of trying to destroy the Wagner Group. He has a history of publicly insulting Russia's defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, and getting away with it. But Prigozhin's open show of arms on Russian soil sent a challenge to the Kremlin that Putin could no longer ignore. In a televised address, the Russian president called Wagner's mutiny a "stab in the back" and warned of civil war. Putin even invoked the violent collapse of the Russian Empire in World War I, though he did not mention Tsar Nicholas II, the disgraced ruler murdered by Russian revolutionaries.
There is another similarity to World War I that Putin did not mention: corruption and incompetence in the Russian military, as well as the inhumane treatment of its own soldiers. Anger with Russia's top brass has not been limited to Wagner, and Prigozhin's rage may well extend to the ranks of the Russian military. At the very least, that Prigozhin's army was able to travel hundreds of miles unhindered shows that the Kremlin lacks the wherewithal to put down a domestic rebellion, especially when its best troops are fighting in Ukraine.
Despite the drama of the situation, a mutiny by Russia's scariest people should not come as a surprise...
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