Mutiny Interrupted: Prigozhin Stands Down

>> Foreign Language Translator: The defense ministry tried to deceive the public and the president, to tell a story that there was a crazy aggression from the Ukrainian side, and that they were joining with the NATO alliance to attack us. Therefore, the so called special operation of the 24 February, was started for other reasons.

What was the point of the war? The war was needed for the self promotion of a bunch of bastards, to show off what a strong army it is, so that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, gets a marshal.

>> Bill Whalen: It's Monday June 26, 2023, and welcome back to GoodFellows, a Hoover institution broadcast examining social, economic, political, and geopolitical concerns.

I'm Bill Whalen. I'm a Hoover distinguished policy fellow, I'll be your moderator today. Joining me are two of our three GoodFellows. John Cochrane is on travel, so we don't have him today. But we are graced by the presence of the historian Niall Ferguson and the geostrategist Lieutenant General HR McMaster.

They are Hoover Institution senior fellows. And rounding out our conversation today is Dmitri Alperovitch. Dmitri is founder of the Washington DC based think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator. He's also the host of Geopolitics Decanted, a podcast featuring analysis and in depth, expert interviews on topics ranging from war in the Ukraine, great power competition with China, semiconductors and cybersecurity.

My God, that sounds like GoodFellows, doesn't it? Dmitri, welcome to GoodFellows.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Thanks so much for having me.

>> Bill Whalen: So Dmitri, sharing the screen with you today are one of the world's truly eloquent historians, and also eloquent in his own way, a former presidential national security advisor. Dmitri, if you had HR McMaster's old job, you're in the White House as the president's national security advisor, head of the National Security Council.

Which meant that you were privy to American intelligence gathering, Dmitri, what would you like to know at this hour? Would you like to know Vladimir Putin's whereabouts? Would you like to know Yevgeny Prigozhin's whereabouts? Would you like to know the disposition of Russia's oligarchs and military brass? Dmitri, would you like to know the mindset of the Wagner group, which faces the July 1 deadline to sign up with Russia's defense ministry?

Or in another corner of the world, Dmitri, would you like to know what Xi Jinping and his advisors are thinking?

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: So I think the most important thing for me to understand in that particular role would be the stability of Vladimir Putin's regime. What is going to happen going forward?

I think he has been significantly weakened by this action, in part because of his response to this action. Let's face it, he's been MIA for the first 13 hours of this mutiny, ever since Prigozhin launched that late Friday night our time until early Saturday morning. When Putin finally came out and gave the order to crush the rebellion.

And of course the Russian military did anything but. They did not manage to stop this column of just 5000 troops and maybe 100 armored vehicles driving all the way to the outskirts of Moscow, being about two hours south of Moscow. Something that hasn't happened since 1941 when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, really a remarkable undertaking.

The fact that the Russian air force was not able to stop them, the Russian ground forces that are surrounding Moscow were not able to get them to stop much earlier than they did is truly, truly remarkable. And I think what this shows most, even though this meeting had ended, is that, the central government is very weak.

And it doesn't necessarily mean in my view right now that a coup is eminent against Putin and someone's gonna to replace him any day now. But what I think is likely to happen is that everyone in the elites in Russia is thinking at the moment, if Prigozhin can do this, if he can challenge central power, if he can challenge the Kremlin in this way and get away with it.

And so far he has, he's still alive, he is still seemingly free. Then what can I get away with in my own little corner of Russia as a governor of some region? Can I do more to enrich myself, to get more power? And do I really need to ask the Kremlin for permission?

So I think you may be going a little bit back into the 1990s, into the late stage Yeltsin era where Yeltsin was still president. He was still theoretically in power, but pretty much ignored by most people and considered as a joke. Putin is not yet that, but he is starting to move in that direction.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Niall?

>> Niall Ferguson: Dmitri, can I ask a question? Putin himself, when he spoke on Saturday morning Moscow time, brought up to my surprise the 1917 revolution. And that struck me as a strange thing to do, I wasn't quite sure how the analogy worked. Was Prigozhin supposed to be Kornilov?

Did that make Putin, Nicholas II? What would you make of Putin's speech? It was notable for declaring that the mutineers were traitors, and threatening dire consequences. None of those consequences have materialized, but I wondered what you thought he was doing by bringing up 1917.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: So this is something that he's been doing a lot lately, in the last few years.

Basically, highlighting how the Bolshevik regime, the communist regime that he grew up in that he was a product of, basically betrayed Russia, right? When he launched this invasion of Ukraine, he said that it was Lenin that created this problem by giving Ukraine its own republic within the Soviet Union and, essentially leading it to the path to become a state.

All that, of course, is false historically. But he's been trying to blame the Bolsheviks, and even sometimes Stalin himself, for the failures that Russia finds itself in today, the geopolitical failures. And I think that was a continuation of that blame game. Where he was again saying that the Bolsheviks basically betrayed Russia when they not only overthrew the governments, but also ended up negotiating this peace deal with the Germans in World War I.

There was really not much of a peace deal, it was basically complete surrender to the Germans. And thank God, for Russia, that Germany ended up losing World War I. Because if not for that, Russia would be a much, much smaller country coming out of World War I.

>> HR McMaster: Hey, Dmitri, just you mentioned it at the outset.

You said this was kind of astonishing, the degree to which Prigozhin could just get away with this. And what struck me is that this ex hot dog salesman, ex con, takes over the southern military district, like the CENTCOM headquarters, and there's no resistance, right? And so, I just wondered, what does this tell you about the military and the military chain of command?

But how about the Russian people, Dmitri? You have your finger on the pulse on this, much better than any of us. I see there's been kind of a run on the banks, right? There's a restriction now on how much people can withdraw from their bank accounts. It has to shake their confidence, right?

And clearly, Putin, who tried to create this aura of invincibility, I don't think he can regain that aura of invincibility. So, I guess it was astonishing to me to see him just roll into the headquarters and take it over. What are the implications for the military, and I guess, for the Russian people?

What are they thinking about this?

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Well, HR, you're absolutely right. He is a former hot dog vendor back in the 1990s, also former convict. And one of the things that you can call this thing is a hot dog mutiny, a revolution, or attempted revolution. But one of the things that was most astonishing is you absolutely nailed it, is that he's able to get into the equivalent of CENTCOM when CENTCOM was fighting the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Because the southern military district is really the nerve center for fighting the war in Ukraine. And the military, the MPs that were there and others, not only did they not resist. They didn't surrender. They didn't run away, they didn't turn sides. They just stood there, and it looked like they had no orders.

And in Russian systems in particular, if you have no orders, you're doing nothing. And this was permeated across the entire campaign. Because it started with him crossing the border from occupied Ukraine, where he had his camps, into Russia. The border guards, they're part of the FSB, basically let him through.

There was no resistance. The Rosgvardia, which is the National Guard, try to set up some roadblocks. And there's this amazing video in Rostov where the tanks are literally driving around the barriers. And the Rosgvardia guys are just standing around there doing absolutely nothing, because no one told them what to do if there is any resistance that is shown by Wagner.

And that continued for 13 hours until Putin came out and gave a speech, because no one knew what to do. Is this the way it's supposed to be? Now, what complicates this even more is that the Russian military actually has deep connections with Wagner, right? Wagner is not some completely independent force.

Even though Prigozhin runs this as a paramilitary company, they've been deeply integrated within the Russian military. They've been really created by the GRU, Russian military intelligence. They've been funded and armed to the teeth by them, which they may be regretting now. They should have read Machiavelli, The Prince, about the nature of mercenary companies and how they don't turn out well for states to create them.

But the point is that for the last 9 months, or 12 months now, they've been fighting this conflict in Ukraine alongside the Russian military. So there's a lot of deep connections among lower level officers. And I think there was some resistance on the part of these officers to actually shoot at these guys because they've been brothers in arms in the trenches, right?

So there's a lot of personal relationships there that I think most people did not appreciate.

>> Bill Whalen: Dmitri, what was the tipping point here? What prompted the march? I'm sorry for cutting in, Niall. Was it the aforementioned July 1st deadline? Was it being fired upon, as they alleged by Russian forces?

Or is it that or are they just tired of being cannon fodder? Because my understanding, HR, you elaborate on this if you want. Wagner forces are used to go into cities and basically be fired upon to tell the Russians where the fire is coming from. That can't be fun after 16 months.

 

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Yeah, I don't think it was that. I think these guys have been fighting war since really 2014, in Africa and Syria, Libya, and in Ukraine. So they're used to getting fired upon. And at some point, you start missing it, right? So we see this with soldiers coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq.

As terrible as it is, they miss the action. They can't adapt to civilian life well. So I don't think that was that for them. But look, this was absolutely all about this June 10 order from Shoigu that he issued to try to dismantle all PMCs, all paramilitary companies in Russia, but notably Wagner.

And by July 1st, all of these guys had to basically resign from Wagner and sign on with the Russian military, something that Prigozhin did not wanna see. So I've described this conflict as, basically, a business dispute had gotten a little hot. Because at the end of the day, and he has just confirmed this.

He had just put out an audio message a couple hours ago where he basically said that this was all about the June 10th order, that he wanted to preserve Wagner. He, of course, portrayed it as preserving Wagner as a critical instrument of the Russian government and helping its national security, not his own pockets and his own power.

But nevertheless, that's what it was all about, the deadline is looming. He, I think, was shocked when Putin came out in support of Shoigu a few weeks ago, when he gave that interview with the bloggers saying that, yes, of course, these PMCs need to be dismantled and joined with the military.

And I don't think he ever intended to take power to stage a coup. That's why I call it a mutiny, because he wouldn't know what to do, how to run Russia. He has no power base. Let's say you occupy the Kremlin, then what? Who's gonna obey your orders?

Who's gonna actually respect you as president? So I think this was all about throwing a tantrum, basically, and trying to pressure Shoigu, the minister of defense, and the chief of general staff to give him what he wants. Which is to let him keep Wagner, and maybe a sort of an extended goal to actually get those guys replaced as well by showing them to be even weaker than they've already been.

But that's what it was about and I think he was shocked by the fact that no one stopped him. He was shocked that Putin came out so strongly and called him a traitor. He did not expect that, and then he had a choice to face. Does he actually go into Moscow, and then what?

I don't think he had a plan for that. And then there was, I think, real potential for a bloody battle on the outskirts of Moscow that he also didn't wanna get engaged in. And ultimately, Putin himself chickened out and started negotiating a deal. And I do think that Prigozhin got something out of this deal.

I don't believe for a second what Dmitry Peskov has said, that Wagner is gonna get dismantled, Prigozhin is gonna go into exile. None of that makes a whole lot of sense. And of course, Peskov is known as someone who does not interface well with the truth. So I do think that Wagner is likely to be kept intact.

In fact, the most amazing thing about all of this, I gotta say, is that for about 24 hours, Wagner became a non entity in Russia. It started disappearing from the Internet, its offices had been raided. Its recruitment posters were being taken down all over Russia. What is happening today?

It's all going back up. There's a task reporting this morning from the Russian states agency saying that Wagner offices are reopening across Russia and their posters are going back up. It's as if nothing has happened.

>> HR McMaster: So recruiting more new members, yeah.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Exactly.

>> HR McMaster: Yeah.

>> Niall Ferguson: I think this tells us something important about the nature of the Russian federation, of the Russian state.

And that is that it's a kind of Potemkin village behind the facade of tsarist power that Putin likes to project with his enormous tables and his hideous palace interiors. There's actually a sort of mafia operation. And I was thinking, as I was watching the events unfold over the weekend, that this is the kind of behavior you'd expect of bandits, of mafiosi, rather than of presidents and generals.

We're not used to the problem that mercenaries create. But you alluded rightly, Dmitri, to Machiavelli's warning in The Prince against mercenaries. It wasn't a warning that was very much heeded in the subsequent centuries. If you look at the 17th century, there's an enormously powerful mercenary figure, Wallenstein, who plays a huge role in the Thirty Years' War until, finally, he's assassinated.

And there's something of the Wallenstein or a kind of two-penny Wallenstein about Prigozhin. It's easy to mock him because of his origins in catering, not to mention his encounter with the criminal justice system. He has built the Wagner group into a pretty formidable fighting machine. And you mentioned, Dmitri, that it's fought not only in Ukraine, but in multiple African states, as well as in Syria.

And one reason that it really wasn't able to be stopped was that when you turn away from Ukraine and head towards Moscow, there isn't a whole lot in the way of Russian military firepower to stand in your way. Because it's mostly been deployed to fight the war. They were able to bring down at least one attack helicopter.

And that, I think, sends a clear message.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Five.

>> Niall Ferguson: That they meant business. Five is the total it was?

>> Bill Whalen: Whoa.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Five helicopters and.

>> HR McMaster: And a speeding aircraft.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: And a one command plane, yes, that's right.

>> Niall Ferguson: Which I think tells you, behind the Potemkin facade, Russia's defenseless.

And that's a really striking revelation, that they could get so far.

>> HR McMaster: Hey Niall, remember I said this months ago? The Lithuanian army could march on St. Petersburg. They're spent, I think, the conventional military.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: I'm curious, HR, what you think, but the combat aviation is still a significant power in Russia.

And by the way, most of the helicopters they shot down, they were actually not combat helicopters. They were reconnaissance helicopters, they were EW helicopters, electronic warfare. So I think they were trying to monitor the column. But where were the bombers? Where were the attack planes, the SU-24s and 25s that they use in Ukraine?

Why didn't they mobilize those forces to attack this column? That's what I think is so remarkable is that I don't think the Russian military wanted to fire on Wagner. I think that for whatever reason, they chose not to follow Putin's orders. And that, I think, is highly significant.

 

>> HR McMaster: That's really interesting. And I heard these stories, too, about cratering roads, raising draw bridges, really, I think, preparing to try to disrupt the Wagner advance on the outskirts of Moscow. What I'd like to ask you is, what effect do you think this has on the other security services, right?

So our friend, Stephen Kotkin, I would ask maybe a three part question, if I could. Cuz it has everything to do with Putin's ability to stay in power. So, Stephen Kotkin, should I do his voice? Authoritarians, authoritarians need five things to stay in power.

>> HR McMaster: That's what he said, right?

So, okay, but one is they need a repressive security apparatus, right? And typically what they do, and this is my going to school at the Kotkin school here, different security services that are often pitted against each other, used against each other, right? So you saw Wagner turn, but what about the FSB?

What about the GRU? What about the other security apparatus around the country, including the various police forces and so forth? The second thing of these five, I'll just mention three that these authoritarians need, is they need cash flow, right? They need cash flow to keep people on their side, right?

And the cash flow got turned off, so Prigozhin, he didn't like it. And then that precipitated the turning against the minister defense. The third thing of these five that he highlights, and the last one was cover, is you need stories, right? You need to tell people stories about fascists in Ukraine, about the West, all being against you.

Prigozhin let the cat out of the bag. He's like, hey, I didn't see any Nazis. I didn't see any fascists in Ukraine. This was a false pretense, this war was waged under. And by the way, the casualties, it's not the fault of NATO, it's our own ineptitude. So what does this tell you about Putin's grip on power, maybe in those three areas, but others that you're thinking about, Dmitri?

 

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Well, I think you're absolutely right, it's weakened. But here's the problem for thinking about him getting replaced, is there was really no alternative. So I think that for a while, he can absolutely hang on. I just think that people are gonna start ignoring him. In fact, I think Putin is about to turn into his own worst nightmare, which is to have the same fate as his predecessor, Yeltsin.

Who was still president of Russia until he resigned, but was basically a joke and ignored by everyone. And the different elites and clans in Russia were basically doing their own thing, enriching their own pockets and building their own power bases. And I think that's what's gonna start happening in Russia, where people are gonna increasingly decide that Putin is irrelevant to them.

Niall, I'm curious, from your historian perspective, when I was watching this mutiny. And I was thinking back to other insurrections we've seen even in recent years in Turkey, for example, with Erdogan facing a mutiny by the military in 2016. You typically have dictators, and Lukashenko did this in 2020 as well when he rigged the election.

You have immediate crackdowns, often brutal crackdowns. In the case of Erdogan, he went after not just the mutineers themselves, but pretty much anyone who was opposed to him at any point in time, journalists and political figures and the like, and jailed all of them. And this is what I find so remarkable.

I'm not sure there's a historical precedent where you have this mutiny and the mutineers themselves are free. And no one is paying the price, not the people in the military or Esgvardi or FSB that stood around and did nothing. Absolutely no one has been made to pay a price here.

Can you think of other cases in history when that's been the case?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, yes, because a mutiny is different from civilians taking to the streets, because the mutineers are generally armed. And that's why often mutinies take quite a while to be put down. If you think of, for example, some of the mutinies that occurred in World War I, it was impossible immediately to put them down because they were well armed soldiers that were defying orders.

So I think it's too early to be sure quite how this turns out. There's clearly a scenario in which, by year end, a Prigozhin has met the fate of so many of Putin's enemies, either through a window or as a result of some other form of assassination. And those who sided with him, who haven't transferred their allegiance to the official army, get taken out, too, that's possible.

But I think what's interesting is that the probability has clearly gone up, as you mentioned earlier, that Putin's losing it and losing it in all kinds of different directions. Notice Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader, he decided to go with Putin rather than with Prigozhin. But he's another person with effectively, his own army.

There's a scenario in which, going back to HR's point, things begin to fragment, and you end up with the time of troubles scenario. Which was Russia's nightmare period between Ivan the Terrible's reign and the emergence of the Romanov dynasty, when the country simply plunges into chaos with warring warlords, it was a bit like that.

Also remember after the Bolshevik revolution, it wasn't for some years after a period of horrific civil war that the Bolsheviks imposed their order. So we mustn't forget that Russia has plunged into chaos in the past. And the ingredients begin to be there for a similar disintegration, because these forces are not, it seems to me, under Putin's control anymore.

Shoigu is an interesting figure in all of this, the defense minister. It's not like he started life with a silver spoon in his mouth, nor has he got an impeccable military pedigree. He was a construction guy before Putin promoted him. But you see, this is the problem about running a mafia state.

Hey, I like your burgers, why don't you set up your own mercenary army? Hey, you're pretty good at construction, you wanna try being defense minister? If you run a state of the scale of Russia's like you're running the mafia, at some point, you end up in one of those Godfather scenes where the gangsters come for you.

So I think, for me, this significant thing is not the mutiny fizzled out. I don't think it's really over yet. There's complete ambiguity about Prigozhin's status. Is he still facing criminal charges, where is he? I don't think it's yet over. And I think the really important thing is that Putin's credibility as capo dei capi, that's gone.

And that has to mean two things. See if you disagree with me, gentlemen. One, the probability of regime change in Russia just went up. And that means that the probability of a Ukrainian victory just went up, too. This war will end, I think, when Putin's gone. And here I agree with our colleague, Steve.

If there's a nationalist who's willing to say this war sucks, which is what Prigozhin did. This war is a fraud, but I'm still a Russian nationalist. That's the biggest threat that Putin faces.

>> Bill Whalen: Thanks for mentioning Ukraine, Niall, because I do wanna talk about the war. HR, it seems to me that if Vladimir Putin does survive the situation, he is in desperate need of a public relations victory, and soon.

But the question is, which Niall is getting to, are his forces willing to fight? So you look at Ukraine and Russia, Niall, what are Russia's strategic options now?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, the war didn't stop while all of this was playing out behind the Russian lines. And it's important to remember that the Ukrainian counter offensive continued and the Russian army did not disintegrate.

Now, there has to be some negative impact on Russian morale of all of this. And from a Ukrainian point of view, the expectation must be that the gains might turn out to get easier, because it hasn't been easy. The Russians were well dug in, they were well prepared.

And the Ukrainians have not achieved a great breakthrough since they launched their counteroffensive. But I'd be very interested to hear Dmitri and HR's thoughts on this. Because if you view this from a Ukrainian vantage point, Christmas came early. This is the thing that you most needed if you had hopes of winning the war, namely a domestic political crisis in Russia.

And it seems to have begun.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: In talking to folks in Ukraine over the weekend, they were actually very cautious. And I think they were very circumspect that even if something were to change, even if Prigozhin were to somehow take power, they were, I think, very appreciative that this would not necessarily have a big impact on the war.

It's really important to understand that Prigozhin is not antiwar. The first thing he did when he took over southern military district headquarters is to announce in his video that he is allowing the people there, the officers that are managing the war, to continue to do their business. Because it's still important to prosecute this war.

He's not gonna interfere with it. He's not gonna have any negative impact on it. And by the way, to think that this guy is antiwar, he's literally in the war business. He's as pro war as anyone, right? And he has said on many occasions that this war has become existential for Russia, that you need total mobilization.

You need to be more effective or more brutal than what Shoigu and others are doing. So I think we need to understand that his criticism of the pretense for the war was really part of this whole story that he was concocting, that Shoigu and Gerasimov are corrupt, that they tricked Putin into this war.

But I don't think he's got any interest to stop it, because at a minimum, he is making lots of money on this war. So he wants to continue it for that reason and that reason alone. And by the way, I wanna make one quick point on Kadyrov, which is interesting.

Because, as you, Niall, rightly pointed out, Kadyrov sided with Putin, but only after the speech. He was completely silent for 13 hours later. And then he announced on telegram that his forces are being sent to fight Prigozhin and take back Rostov. Well, it apparently took them an entire day to get to Rostov.

In the meantime, Prigozhin got almost all the way to Moscow, a distance that is much longer. And once they got there, the mutiny was over. So I don't think he was in any rush to actually fight Prigozhin.

>> Bill Whalen: Sure.

>> HR McMaster: Yeah, hey, well, in terms of the Russian military, it's really hard to see it with a high degree of fidelity.

But I can't imagine that they are not on the point of breaking. And the reason is just, why do soldiers fight, really? Soldiers fight, I think, because they believe in the mission. But really, because they believe in one another, that they're part of cohesive teams that are bound together by kind of a code of honor, right, and a desire to not let their buddies down.

Also, their confidence is critical to being able to take risks in combat and to fight when you're facing the prospects of death and so forth. And unit cohesion has got to suffer based on how disrupted the chain of command is at the senior level, which we saw. But they've lost so many junior leaders.

You don't pull somebody off the street and make them a company commander or a platoon sergeant or a platoon leader. So I think this is an opportunity. Of course, the offensive has hit some difficulties associated with these layered obstacles and defending positions, defensive positions, and then also the drone and artillery strikes.

But I do think that there's the possibility once this breaks open and you're into more fluid warfare and those defenses are penetrated, I can't see the Russian military putting together an effective response to that kind of a penetration of the defenses. I think that you could see the situation collapse from the Russian perspective quite rapidly in the coming weeks.

And if that's the case, what do the Russians do? They'll apply as many fires as they can, but I think that's becoming depleted. I think that they could do something really desperate and terrible, like screw around with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. I mean, that's something that I think we ought to be planning for in terms of contingencies.

But I really think that this, it's possible to see the land bridge to Crimea being rendered, to see much of the territory taken since 2014 retaken by the Ukrainians. And then be able to place long range systems in range of the Russian military facilities and logistics facilities in Crimea such that those are no longer tenable.

And then what happens? Well, I mean, we don't know, right? That's one of the things about war and warfare. I mean, it's impossible to predict the future course of events because of the interactive nature. But I would just go back to, I think what should give the Ukrainians hope is what Dmitri said, which I think is really important to highlight to our listeners.

He said, what if people just stopped listening to Putin? What happens then? Because the assessment is that they need 300 to 400,000 more Russian troops really to be able to stabilize the front even, or to conduct any kind of an offensive to make good on their annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk.

So, hey, are they gonna get through the fort? No, they're not. They wouldn't even be able to equip them. It would be a further embarrassment. I really think the Ukrainians should be cautiously optimistic. But it's also an opportunity for us to pull out the stops on the support for the Ukrainians.

Stop the incremental provision of support, I think, and give them what they need to complete the counteroffensive.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, that's my next question, HR. How do you step on the gas when it comes to Ukrainian aid, because there's a process here.

>> HR McMaster: Well, I mean, think what's extremely important on this offensive operation is to ensure that they continue to have depth and mobile, protected firepower and protected mobility, the engineering capabilities.

But really the tiered and layered air defense capabilities are immensely important. Because, as Dmitri said, these helicopters are quite destructive, as well as the unmanned aerial systems. So I think that we have provided a great deal of support already. The Ukrainians have integrated that support into the formations that they disengage from the front so they could train on combined arms warfare.

But there are now some additional capabilities, the ones I mentioned, that I think ought to be provided as urgently as possible.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: If I can jump in here. One of the things that I'm hearing from Ukraine, and they're frankly guilty of this somewhat themselves, is that so much of the focus in the administration, the media, and frankly in Kiev, is on lethal systems.

That it is done to the exclusion of non-lethal. And HR, as you know, well, it is the logistics that win wars, not weapons. And I'll give you one specific example. These helicopters, these Ka-52 alligator helicopters have been decimating Ukrainian infantry, but mostly at night. Because they do have MANPADs, they have stingers and other MANPAD systems to take them out.

But they lack night vision goggles in sufficient numbers to take them out at night, and those things cost literally $4,000. So the problem is that the Ukrainians are thinking in Kiev that every dollar that they can get from the United States, they want it allocated towards lethal aid.

And if they ask for anything non-lethal, it will come out of the same bucket of money, and they're gonna get less weapons. And as a result things like mobility, just trucks and other systems that they need to move around, night vision goggles, radios and the like, they're really suffering from a shortage of, and that's really impacting readiness.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Niall, in the First World War, a German general, it might have been Ludendorff, said when talking of Austria, Germany is, I think the quote was shackled to a corpse. Do you think that's what Xi Jinping sees right now? Do you think he feels like he's shackled to a corpse?

 

>> Niall Ferguson: Almost sure that wasn't Ludendorff.

>> Niall Ferguson: But the notion of this fiasco must have been horrifying in Beijing. For Xi Jinping, who placed a very large bet of his own political capital on his partnership with Putin, it's the stuff of nightmares that Russia descends into chaos. It's the worst imaginable scenario that a civil war, a mutiny at least, threatens the stability of the Russian regime.

So I think one of the most interesting features of the crisis over the weekend was the very muted responses that came from countries that have at least been ambivalent towards Russia, if not friendly. There were not many enthusiastic endorsements. It took a long time, actually, for the Chinese foreign ministry to make any statement at all, and what they came out with was a bromide.

So the Chinese must be very concerned that Putin's going to lead Russia down the path towards anarchy. Because that's not on Xi Jinping's agenda at all, that the Chinese are very nervous of anything that has the potential to turn into a revolutionary situation. On the other hand, if you view this from the Chinese strategic vantage point, whatever Xi Jinping may say when he meets with Putin, in truth, the Chinese are not entirely enthusiastic about their relationship with Russia.

Historically, it's somewhat anomalous for there to be such a close partnership, and there may be some benefits over the long run to China from Russia's ongoing weakness. If you talk to my friend Garry Kasparov, he'll tell you that, and you may have heard this too, Dmitri, that the Chinese are in fact waiting for the moment when they can reclaim the territories that were taken from imperial China in the unequal treaties by Russia.

I'm not sure that's Xi Jinping's plan, but certainly there are some people in the more nationalistic Chinese circles that talk that way. So I think it's somewhat nuanced here. I don't think it's in Xi Jinping's interest for Putin to flame out. But I think, from a Chinese strategic vantage point, there may ultimately be benefits.

Though I don't think many people in Xi Jinping's circle think that. I have a question for you, Dmitri, about conspiracy theories. This is a kind of information war as much as it's an actual war. And one of the things that struck me most over the weekend was how many crazy theories were going around that attributed to Prigozhin and to Putin complex ulterior motives.

My favorite was the theory that Prigozhin, once he got his hands on tactical nuclear weapons, had achieved his objective and could then go off to Belarus with them to prepare the nuclear strike on Kiev. Which Putin would then be able to deny that he'd authorized. You must have seen even more of this stuff on social media, because it somehow seems to proliferate wherever the Russian military machine is concerned.

But it impressed me how many quite sophisticated people were ready to believe that this was all an elaborate hoax, and we were being taken in by the conventional account that a mutiny had broken out against Putin. How do you interpret these conspiracy theories? And do they pose a problem, do you think?

 

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Well, I think that anytime you have someone you thought was a strong leader demonstrating extreme weakness, people start to interpret that as having an ulterior motive, maybe Putin planned this all along. One of the conspiracy theories that has been going around is that maybe he wants to reallocate the Wagner forces to Belarus to do some sort of crazy offensive on Kiev from there.

None of that makes any sense and is not true. And by the way, one thing about nuclear weapons, thankfully, every single one of Russian strategic and tactical nuclear weapons now has what are known as PALs, permissive access links, these codes that prevent it from being launched unless you are in possession of the codes, which are in Moscow.

So even if Prigozhin had somehow gotten access to those nuclear weapons, and there's no evidence that he did, he wouldn't be able to use them. So thankfully, at least the Russian nuclear weapons are much more secure than most people believe.

>> Bill Whalen: Do you agree, HR?

>> HR McMaster: Yeah, I mean, I do.

I think that the conspiracy theories also included that this was something that they contrived so that they could manage-

>> Bill Whalen: False flag.

>> HR McMaster: Yeah, a managed crisis type thing. But I think what we saw is really what happened, is a disgruntled mercenary who was no longer gonna get his paycheck from the government, from Putin.

But I really wonder what effect this is gonna have on Putin himself. Dmitri, could you maybe talk about that? So I'm thinking about the Shah of Iran. I mean, much different situation, a lot of cultural differences, everything else. But in '79 is when the Shah didn't follow up on kind of a brutal crackdown that his security forces had conducted, and he started to take kind of a conciliatory approach, right, to the revolutionaries.

What happened is his security apparatus didn't listen to him. The army stayed home, and the revolution succeeded. What do you think are the plausible futures here for Putin? You already mentioned, again, we'll go back to Kotkin, right? Kotkin always says, hey, these authoritarians don't have to be that strong.

They just have to be stronger than the organized opposition. But could you outline for us what you see as the plausible alternative futures here?

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Yeah, so that was a really interesting analogy, HR, in 1979. Of course, the difference here is that Prigozhin was not Ayatollah Khamenei and he had no interest in taking power.

He had no power base, unlike Khamenei, to do so. And that I think is the one advantage that Putin has, is that there's no one really on the stage, except Alexei Navalny aside, who is in prison. And absolutely no one in the elites wants to let him out.

But aside from him, there's really no one that would emerge as an alternative to him. And one of the things that Putin does value extremely well is loyalty. And I think that's part of what got him so angry at Prigozhin is he thought that this is a guy that he has known, at least in some capacity, since the 1990s, was loyal to him, benefit from his patronage, and turn on him.

That's something that he could not imagine. But most of the people around him are loyal to him. They benefited massively in terms of their own pocketbooks and power from Putin. So I think it's going to take a lot for them to actually turn on Putin. Cuz he's actually not a brutal dictator in the sense of Stalin with his own people, right?

With Stalin, no one ever knew whether they would live or die another day. They would have to turn in their relatives, cuz Stalin was so bloodthirsty and paranoid. That is not Putin. He's, in fact, promoting relatives. One of the people that is emerging as a very powerful member of the Russian cabinet right now is Patrushev.

But not the Nikolai Patrushev who has been a longtime sorta great cardinal in the Kremlin, now runs national Security Council, but his son. Who is now the agriculture minister, not cuz of his great talents, by the way, and has even been talked about as a successor to Putin.

That's what Putin tends to do with his people, help them out, make them rich, make them more powerful. So I think it's gonna take a lot for them to actually turn on him. Cuz once you do that, once you turn on the tsar, it's a little bit like in the mafia.

I think the mafia analogy is exactly right, Niall, is that once you take a shot at the leader and you become the leader, then you yourself might be targeted. And that's a big psychological step. Even in the mafia, you sorta don't go after the boss, right? You have sit down to figure out how to mitigate and resolve your issues.

And I think that's part of the things that's gonna keep Putin likely in power for quite some time. But there might be pressure increasingly from his regime for him to step down and do manage transition to younger generation. Cuz the thing that he's demonstrated here is that he's incapable of making decisions, he's waited 13 hours to do the speech.

The military did not seem to follow his orders, and he's disappeared once again. We haven't seen him for the last 48 hours, basically. Where is he? He does not seem in control. At what point does someone come to him, like Patrushev, and say, you know what? It's time to do a transition.

Don't run for the election next year. Appoint my son, appoint someone else, appoint me, and we're gonna take over.

>> Niall Ferguson: I wouldn't be at all surprised by that outcome. I keep trying to remind myself how many dictators I already saw in my lifetime fall from power. People who once seemed unassailable, who were suddenly brought low, from Ceausescu to Gaddafi to Saddam.

So we mustn't make our imaginations lazy. It's perfectly easy to imagine an announcement being made that Putin's stepping down. And it's the kinda scenario that we saw not that long ago in Russia when Gorbachev temporarily was removed from power. And that really was the end of him, although he managed to defeat the coup.

So I think I'm increasingly believing that this is how it ends for Putin, because of this very open display of weakness. The British journalist Xan Smiley used the phrase Upper Volta with rockets in a very derogatory way about the Soviet Union in its later phase. It somehow seems more true now, Russia really starts to resemble maybe Sudan with missiles.

I was listening to the BBC World Service on Saturday morning as I was getting ready. And I missed the transition from the story about Russia to the story about Sudan. And it took me a while to realize that they weren't talking about Russia anymore. They weren't talking about Moscow, they were actually talking about Khartoum.

So I sense that this is the true extent of Russia's dictum in our lifetimes from a true superpower, which the Soviet Union clearly was, to something that is very close to Upper Volta with rockets. And in which an African outcome in which there's some kind of overthrow of Putin, perhaps some fighting in the capital, that starts to become perfectly imaginable to me.

 

>> Bill Whalen: So Niall, I refer you to Tony Soprano. Who once told a psychiatrist, and I quote, there are two endings for a guy like me, dead or in the can.

>> Niall Ferguson: It's hard to believe that Vladimir Putin dies peacefully in his bed surrounded by weeping relatives, don't you think?

 

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: I could see a scenario where he is forced to retire. In the last, really since Stalin, you've had actually peaceful transitions of power, even during coups. Khrushchev was ousted but allowed to retire with his pension. Gorbachev was allowed to live. Yeltsin, he retired himself, but basically was protected by Putin.

So I could see a scenario where if the elites take over, they basically tell him, old man, it's time to go. We're gonna protect you. You're gonna be fine, but we're taking over.

>> HR McMaster: Hey, Erdogan has a few spare bedrooms in his palace also.

>> HR McMaster: Maybe you could move into one of them.

 

>> Niall Ferguson: I noticed that was one of the calls that Putin placed. It was interesting to see who Putin reached out to in the crisis. Erdogan was one of those people.

>> HR McMaster: Yeah.

>> Bill Whalen: So what is the West's play here, Niall? What do Western nations do right now? Do they sit back, just gather intelligence, and watch Russia implode?

Or does the West in any way get more actively involved in what we might call regime change?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, I think the thing about any kinda covert operation is that it should be covert. At this point, the West is in the happy position of facing three adversaries, each of which has a serious domestic problem.

Not only has Russia just witnessed a mutiny unlike anything we've seen in modern Russian history, but Iran has only just emerged from a period of domestic turmoil. And China had to abandon its zero COVID policy in the face of student protests. And these are the three powers that have formed a kinda axis of ill will.

I wrote a piece about a couple of weeks ago saying that you could understand geopolitics in traditional terms, that there's the heartland, and that's essentially China, Russia, Iran. It's the great Eurasian world island. And then there's the rim, and that's the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and the Interpedian countries.

And that's really the kinda, those are the great coalitions that face one another through Ukraine. And I wrote this piece in a somewhat pessimistic mode, saying that I wasn't confident that the rim would hold up. Well, I've been getting emails from Team Biden in the last two weeks, particularly in the last 48 hours, saying, you see, actually, the rim land is doing great.

It's the heartland that's in trouble. So I don't think that anything more should be done than circumspectly, as HR said, to step up support for Ukraine, to make sure that any advantage can be exploited by the Ukrainians in the battlefield. And to smile, eating popcorn, as the Russian state gradually descends into the final scene of one of those gangster movies.

I can't decide which one it is, whether it's The Godfather we're watching or Scarface. Kinda hope it's Scarface.

>> HR McMaster: I'd just like to add one thing, and ask Dmitri about this too. I think the other thing we could do is create problems for Russia elsewhere. I mean in Belarus, in Central Asia, in southeastern Europe, in West Africa.

I mean, I would say the free world in partnership with others, to really, now that his weakness is exposed internationally, that should create some opportunities as well. Dmitri, do you think there are opportunities to maybe even to approach India? Hey, listen, I know you want Russia to hedge against China and Pakistan.

But I mean, they're not gonna be a reliable hedge for you.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Yeah, I think it's hard because with India, for example, how are they really hedging? I mean, all they're doing is buying cheap oil, which they're gonna continue to do as long as it's available. And maybe we could move them away from buying cheap Russian weapons, especially given how they've seen them perform on the battlefield in Ukraine.

But they're not really in Moscow's corner here. I don't think that they care much about what happens in the war in Ukraine as long as they can get their cheap energy. This whole conflict is too far away from them. But I do wanna go back to you, Niall, for a second, and ask you this question.

Because there's this assumption. And we've talked about this today, that if there is a regime change, even sort of an elite regime change where Patrushev or something like that comes to power, that the war would end. I'm not so sure. I mean, I look at, for example, the war in Afghanistan.

Not our war, but the Soviet war that started under Brezhnev, continued under Andropov, continued under Chernenko and even continued under Gorbachev for three years before it ended. I mean, wars are notoriously hard to pop out of. Of course, our own Afghanistan war continued under four presidents as well.

So I don't know. Do we actually have historical precedent for wars being that easy to end, even if there is a change in power?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, they're not easy to end, but they do end. Look at the Korean war, for example, which in many ways this war most closely resembles to me.

A period of extraordinarily kinetic warfare for a year, and then gradually, a descent into attrition and stalemate, that was only possible to end with Stalin gone. And I think that the analogy here is that you can't really wrap this up with Putin there, because he's so clearly invested in it.

But it's not clear to me that this is a war that ultimately benefits Russia's elites. And I think it would be hard to find anybody privately said it was a good idea. I mean, it would have been a good idea if it had gone according to plan, and Zelenskyy had been easy to oust, and Kyiv had fallen in a matter of days.

But in truth, this has been a disaster. And I think military disasters are pretty bad for the people who launch them as a general rule. And by and large, it's their departure from the scene that makes it possible to end the war. I'll give you a few more examples.

You needed regime changes in the combatant countries in World War I to bring the conflict to an end. As you mentioned earlier, that happened in Russia first, took Russia out of the war. But it didn't actually save Germany, Austria-Hungary, because there was regime change in Austria-Hungary and then ultimately in Germany.

And only with the kaiser gone was it possible even to begin discussing peace terms. So I do think the change at the top is pretty much the prerequisite. And there are gonna be a obvious incentives from the point of view of the next Russian leader to wrap this war up.

It's been pretty disastrous. It's not clear that it's going to achieve its objective beyond making at least a large part of Ukraine rubble. And it leaves Russia with this real weakness in Central Asia and particularly in the Far East. So I think if you're the next genius strategist who wants to run the Russian federation, you'd be well advised to kinda wrap this thing up and rethink your whole strategy.

Because Putin's strategy, let's face it, is ending in failure. I do wanna go back to something that HR said. I think the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant worries me a lot. The worse things go for Putin, the more desperate his conduct becomes. If you're capable of blowing up the Kakhovka Dam, then I think you're capable of detonating whatever explosives have now been placed around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant.

Putin certainly has the view that a scorched Ukraine, a ruined Ukraine, an uninvestable Ukraine, is a kind of sufficient victory. And that's to me, the worrying scenario, that things go so badly for him that he does something really catastrophic. And that, I think, is probably why our friends in Kyiv are being quite circumspect and restrained.

Cuz they know this isn't over by any means.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, we are short on time, so I'd like to ask each of you one last question, and that is this. This is a fluid story. It's Monday the 26th. Things will continue to change this week. Dmitri, tell me one thing that you're looking for, one thing next in this Wagnerian opera.

And then also throw in one prediction for us.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Well, I wanna know what happens to Prigozhin. Does he actually end up in Belarus? I have some doubts about that. And even if he does, Belarus is basically a vassal state of Russia. Does that really change anything for him?

Is he gonna be a free man? And is he gonna be allowed to run Wagner? Because if he is, that means he has basically won this mutiny. He's gotten what he wanted to accomplish out of this conflict that he started. And that means really bad things for Putin down the road.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, HR, one development to watch and one prediction.

>> HR McMaster: I'd like to know more about how the security forces broadly, and each of them as individuals, responded to this crisis, and what that bodes for the potential fragmentation of the security apparatus in the Russian state in the future.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Niall, in addition to the power plant, one thing to watch for and one prediction.

>> Niall Ferguson: Let's keep a close eye on the morale of Russian frontline troops. Their willingness to keep fighting is crucial. If they start to believe that the war is futile and the man they're fighting for is a kind of hollow man of straw, then I think that will be of absolutely crucial importance.

And no amount of weaponry will suffice if the morale of the troops suddenly collapses. The second thing to watch is the debate on Ukrainian membership of NATO. I'm afraid that the West has not got anything resembling a consensus on this. And this is a problem. It seems to me that it's really a perfectly straightforward argument that at this point, Ukraine has won the right to be in NATO.

And it can't ever be secure if it's not in NATO. Even Henry Kissinger has come round to that view. And I find it disheartening that there's no real consensus about this.

>> HR McMaster: I'm hearing that there's gonna probably be a surprise at Vilnius in terms of a consensus position on a path to NATO membership.

So I'm hoping you're wrong about that. You might be right, I mean, but.

>> Niall Ferguson: I hope I'm wrong.

>> HR McMaster: I'm hearing some more encouraging indications. And I would just add EU membership as well in terms of a clear path. Because what that would do is bolster, I think, confidence in terms of a sustainable defense in Ukraine, but also the path forward for economic and reconstruction, and ensuring that Ukraine is a viable state economically as well.

 

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: But HR, can that happen before the war ends? How do they get in to bait NATO?

>> HR McMaster: No, I think what they're looking at doing is announcing a path to NATO membership, right, and broad support for Ukraine becoming a NATO member after the resolution of this conflict, and the various steps that Ukraine would take.

 

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: But here's the paradox about that position, is that you're basically giving Vladimir Putin or whoever comes next an incentive and a reason to continue this war that they can use with their own people by saying, see, as long as we keep fighting, Ukraine will never join NATO.

 

>> HR McMaster: Yeah, or I know there's a downside to it, obviously. Putin will use it in every way he can. But I think the other thing to say, I mean, the response is it was never about that anyway, which I believe. And the countries that were under threat by Russia with various forms of subversion and aggression below the threshold of what might elicit a military response were not invaded because they were part of NATO.

So I think there's a counterargument which may or may not resonate with the Russian people. But I take your point, I think you're right about that. That's exactly how Putin will try to use it.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Yeah, I'll tell you this, two things can be true. The war may not have been started because of NATO expansion.

But Putin can absolutely use the threat of NATO expansion to keep it going.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, let's end it there, guys. Dmitri, first time on GoodFellows, we hope you enjoyed the experience.

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Thank you so much, it was fun.

>> Bill Whalen: And the podcast I mentioned, it's Geopolitics Decanted, and tell our viewers where they can find it.

 

>> Dmitri Alperovitch: Just on every podcast platform, Apple Spotify, your favorite platforms.

>> Bill Whalen: Great, I look forward to checking it out. I think you dropped an episode earlier today talking about this very topic. So listeners, check it out, definitely. Well, that's it for our episode. John Cochrane, wherever you are, you are missed.

Come back home soon, my friend. On behalf of the GoodFellows, Niall Ferguson, HR McMaster, our guest today, Dmitri Alperovitch, we hope you enjoyed today's conversation. By the way, if you wanna keep abreast of this topic, sign up for the Hoover Daily Report. That means every time that Niall and HR are in the news, you'll get it in your inbox every weekday.

You just go to hoover.org and find that. And of course, subscribe to our show. And I think our next show will be in mid July, if I'm not mistaken. I'm not gonna be here. So Niall, HR, John can flip a coin over who has the dubious honor of being our moderator.

So again, thanks for joining our conversation today. We hope you enjoyed it, and we'll see you soon. Take care.

>> Female Announcer: If you enjoyed this show and are interested in watching more content featuring HR McMaster, watch Battlegrounds, also available at hoover.org.