Wagner Rebellion

The Wagner revolt in June 2023 has been the lowest point of Putin’s regime. It was the single most dangerous moment for Kremlin, and the moment where it appeared to be the weakest.

In many respects it seems to be unprecedented. It is the first real attempt of an armed insurrection since the very October Revolution. Through Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, even an attempt of a military revolt would be impossible, unthinkable. And yet, in 2023 it happened - and for the first time in more than a hundred years.

In this regard, it appears to be a massive, absolute security failure on the regime’s behalf.

Which raises two questions:

First, how could this revolt could happen in the first place

Second, why did it end with failure

But let’s start from the beginnings.

1. Russian army - as many military forces around the world - is heavily coup optimised. The key priority of military buildup is: the military should not have the means, nor instruments to overthrow their political leadership. This is in fact the single most important domestic political issue in the country.

2. That is very easy to explain. The last time the Russian state went through a complete reset was in 1917. There is a direct, uninterrupted continuity from Lenin to Putin. There is very little continuity with anything that happened before Lenin. The revolution is the point zero, the Big Bang when the history started.

3. When the Bolsheviks took over Russia, they were horrified by the prospect of a military coup by their own military officers. Governed by the impressions of French and English revolutions, they expected to be overthrown by a military putsch. English Revolution ends with Cromwell. French Revolution ends with Bonaparte. And so will end the Russian one

4. Being obsessed with the possibility of a military putsch (by their own officers), and being determined to prevent it by whatever means possible, they took certain precautions to rule out even the theoretical possibility of a coup

5. For that reason, they built the Leviathan structure of state security whose purpose and only reason for existence was to check the army, infiltrate the army, spy on the army, control the army and neutralise the army, should the necessity arise. Since 1917, that has been the key rationale of Russian military buildup

6. Every military force, and every armed force raised in Russia since 1917 has been heavily infiltrated, spied on, controlled by, and checked by the state security services. That included every branch of every troops, regular or irregular

7. And vice versa, spying on the army, checking the army and controlling the army has been the real job of the state security all along.

8. Wagner is the major and perhaps the only major exception from that rule. That was a large military organisation that had somehow escaped being infiltrated by the state security agents. In fact, it made a focus on not being infiltrated by them and - apparently - succeeded in that endeavour

9. As a mercenary group, Wagner recruited anyone, with any background. Former military. Former policemen. Former prison guards. Former customs officers. Former drug enforcement. Former soldiers of French Foreign Legion, even. Absolutely anyone, of any background. With one major exception: Russian state security. Former FSB agents were firmly banned from ever joining Wagner

10. That is again very easy to explain. If you start recruiting former state security agents, you will be soon infiltrated by their “former” agents, top down.

11. This lack of infiltration and, therefore, the lack of control mechanisms (normally executed by the state security) really explains why the revolt became possible in the first place. Wagner just lacked the official, open control mechanism (special FSB units within), just as it lacked the unofficial, secret agents of the FSB on the positions of command & control. Again, unlike every other military force in Russia.

12. In retrospect, this looks like a huge, massive failure on the behalf of Russian political leadership. There is a large, heavily armed military force that somehow escapes infiltration and, therefore, becomes uncontrollable. Why would they allow that to happen, in the first place? Honestly, it sounds very dumb of them

13. The thing with Wagner is that was never meant to be big. Originally, it was just a small unit of mercenaries doing special operations and hit jobs in Syria, Libya, Central Africa, Donbass et cetera. It was a small structure, and in addition to that, an effectively irregular structure.

14. For most of its history, Wagner was really, really small. It included just several hundred people scattered on their missions all over the globe + several thousand reservists, who mostly live at home in Russia but can occasionally participate on Wagner’s missions, should the necessity arise.

15. At every given moment in time, the Wagner unit was pretty small and it was far, far away. It was not even all concentrated in one place, their already limited forces being scattered around multiple missions & places simultaneously.

16. That was until 2022. In 2022, the original plan of Special Operation did not work out perfectly, and the upper political leadership needed to improvise

17. Originally, Kremlin did not plan or intend to use Wagner in the Special Operation. In fact, Wagner fighters do not seem to have entered Ukraine in February 2022. But once the original plan of invasion (which did not include Wagner) failed, the supreme leader needed to make up something else, and quickly

18. In these circumstances, the previously small Wagner group expanded manyfold. Previously you had few hundred fighters all over the globe + few thousand reservists at home. Now you had dozens of thousands of armed fighters, all in direct proximity to the Russian border

19. Now the thing is: this expansion happened very, very quickly. In less than a year. Plus it was not a normal year, but a year of heavy military defeats & humiliations, when the upper leadership had other concerns, other businesses, other work to do, and just could not coup optimise as heavily as it normally does in the peace time.

20. So, over this short period of time, Wagner expanded more than by an order of magnitude while completely avoiding infiltration by the state security, and remaining as unchecked, and as uncontrollable as when it was just a tiny group of hitmen working far, far away.

21. This could not be but a temporary situation. Eventually, the leadership was concerned with the excessive independence and uncontrollability of Wagner, and decided to impose a tighter control, integrating it into a regular military structure.

22. As a result, Wagner revolted

What lessons can we learn from this story?

1. You will understand big changes much, much better once you will realise they happen by multiple iterations.

2. Massive change is not so much a part of some long-term strategic plan (great rarity) as a result of many, many different steps taken in different times, in different circumstances, and motivate by the very different considerations.

3. Now the thing is that some of these steps were taken in the atmosphere of extreme urgency, when the supreme leadership needed to devise an immediate response to a pressing problem. Dealing with an emergency, they take actions they would have never taken otherwise. And that is what happened with Wagner.

4. Originally, Kremlin wanted to have a small, irregular and quasi independent unit of mercenaries to do dirty work many thousands miles away from Moscow. So, they created such a unit. It was a tactical response to the tactical problem (= how to get dirty work done without your name being associated with it)

5. Then, Kremlin has massively fucked up with the invasion of Ukraine, and had to improvise. For that reason, they allowed to expand this originally small corps manyfold. Again, it was a tactical response to the tactical problem (= damage control for the failure of the original invasion plan)

6. Now, as the problems have piled up, and Kremlin was facing increasingly wild & increasingly uncontrollable military force, it saw it necessary to put it under the firm institutional control. So, it ordered to merge the Wagner with the regular army structure. In this case, too, it was a tactical response taken as a damage control for the cumulative result of steps 1 & 2¹.

7. Trying to evade the control, and failing to do it by peaceful negotiation, the Wagner tried to execute armed pressure, and organised what was effectively a military demonstration against their merge with the regular army. In their case, too, it was a tactical response to the problem of being put under the firm control of military bureaucracy (and state security)².

Now why did not Wagner overthrow the regime and take political power?

After all, their insurrection looks very much alike to how most envision the military coup. Organise an elite military corps, concentrate it, prepare an attack in secrecy, do one thunderbolt strike, neutralise the leadership and take power.

That is indeed how almost everyone imagines the coup mechanics.

Now the thing is that this picture is wrong.

That is not how the real coups happen.