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Prigozhin drama highlights Putin’s weakness
Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics.
What really happened in Russia between Putin and Prigozhin?
Well, it was drama of the highest order. There was bound to come a clash between Putin and the military leadership on the one side and Mr. Prigozhin and the Wagner Group at some point in time. It had been building up. And then, of course, there was a crescendo with an attempt at a military coup de facto. That sort of failed. That was bound to happen. He didn't have the resources to take over the Kremlin. But what will come now remains to be seen. I think it's extremely unlikely that Mr. Prigozhin will fade from the scene. I think he will continue his campaign against the military leadership. And I think Mr. Putin will continue his attempt to get the Wagner Group under control. At the bottom of it all is, of course, the increasing recognition among virtually everyone in Russia that Mr. Putin has launched a war that he is not winning. And then there is a battle for whom to blame for this, the military leadership, Mr. Putin himself or someone else, which consequences to be drawn from that? We've only seen the first act of a drama that is bound to be, yes, dramatic in the months to come.
Former Russian intelligence officer: Prigozhin's threat to Putin is “ludicrous”
President Vladimir Putin faced the greatest challenge to his power in decades as Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin led thousands of his men toward Moscow this weekend in what Putin himself called an “armed rebellion.”
Wagner forces appeared to take control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, a major logistical base of operations for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Putin vowed swift action to crush the uprising. Prigozhin then made a deal to "avoid bloodshed" and called the whole thing off.
On next week’s Season 6 premiere of “GZERO World with Ian Bremmer,” Dmitri Trenin, former director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and former Russian intelligence colonel, explains the view of the war from inside Russia. Speaking just hours before Prigozhin began his march, Trenin told Bremmer that it’s “ludicrous” to believe there is any serious threat to the Kremlin.
The fact that a former Russian intelligence officer and Putin ally didn’t see Prigozhin as a “challenge” hours before the Wagner chief launched his rebellion raises questions about whether the Kremlin and those closest to Putin seriously underestimated Prigozhin’s threat. The events of the last 24 hours certainly show that the Russian president’s grip on power may not be as iron-tight as previously believed.
Tune in to “GZERO World with Ian Bremmer” on US public television starting this Friday, June 30, to watch the full interview. Check local listings.
Should NATO watch its southern flank?
As NATO leaders gather this week in Madrid for their first summit since the war in Ukraine began, they will talk mainly about the immediate bogeyman, Russia, and the long-term strategic rival, China. Meanwhile, host Spain is seizing the opportunity to get the alliance to pay at least some attention to Africa and parts of the Middle East, where Russia and jihadists are stirring up trouble that could impact Mediterranean countries.
Wait, doesn’t NATO have enough on its plate? Certainly, but Spain and Italy — and to a lesser extent France and the UK — have long warned that political instability in the Sahel and elsewhere has ripple effects across Europe in the form of jihadism that triggers massive waves of African migration.
The Spanish have a clear interest in all of this. Days before the summit, 23 migrants died while trying to jump the border fence to enter Melilla, one of Spain’s two enclaves in Morocco. Although in the past the Moroccans have weaponized migration as leverage over the Spanish, the two sides have been chummier lately since Madrid acknowledged Rabat’s sovereignty over Western Sahara earlier this year.
This time, though, the Moroccan border guards didn't stand down. They were overwhelmed.
Spain claims that the unprecedented wave of migrants has a lot to do with the pandemic-induced economic and food crises aggravated by the war in Ukraine, which has, for instance, led to a recent surge in migrant arrivals to Spain’s Canary Islands.
Dario Cristiani, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund and the Rome-based Istituto Affari Internazionali, doesn’t buy Madrid’s argument.
The war in eastern Europe, he says, "will not unleash a new, bigger wave; there will be always waves of migration from Africa" due to massive population growth, water scarcity, and climate change, so migrants will still want to flee the continent "no matter what happens in Ukraine."
Spain and Italy also worry about Russia’s growing mercenary activity in Africa, especially in fragile countries like Libya and Mali.
Madrid and Rome fear that — emboldened by their success in Syria — Vladimir Putin might use mercs employed by the shadowy Wagner Group to perpetuate instability and unleash another migrant crisis on Europe as payback for sanctions — similar to what his pal Alexander Lukashenko did with the EU late last year.
NATO should definitely keep an eye on what the Russians are up to in Africa, says Marc Pierini, a former EU diplomat and visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe.
Wagner’s soldiers of fortune, he explains, have become "very visible" in Libya, where they now enjoy de-facto control of the Jufra air base near Sirte. If the Russian military someday decides to take over from the mercs and deploy ballistic missiles there, Pierini notes that "the defense of Europe would be in a totally new situation."
So, what does Spain actually want from NATO? Officially, Madrid is asking for stuff like more intelligence-sharing and better policing of “hybrid threats” related to migration.
(Although they probably won’t say it out loud, especially as summit hosts, what the Spanish would really like is for NATO to revise its charter to place the enclaves in Morroco under Article 5 protection, so Rabat will back off.)
The thing is, its southern flank has never been a priority for NATO, according to Cristiani.
Spain and Italy, he adds, might better pitch the alliance by arguing that the Russian merc presence in Mali, Libya, or Syria is all "part of the same arc of crisis" as Putin's war in Ukraine. But they should do so carefully — unlike what he called Spain's “shoddy” attempt to blame Russia for a recent spat with Algeria.
Finally, if NATO is too busy, who should step in to help out with migration to the EU? Perhaps Brussels.
"Just as the EU pays Turkey to do this with Syrian refugees that want to cross into Europe, the EU — and not Spain alone — should pay Morocco to do this," says Mark Katz, professor of politics and government at George Mason University. "In other words, the problem Spain faces with refugees from Africa should not just be considered a NATO issue, but an EU one as well."
The Graphic Truth: Russia arms Africa
Russia has been trying to regain political and economic clout across Africa, a continent where the Kremlin yielded great influence during the Cold War. For years, Moscow has been upping its investment in African countries to gain a strategic foothold on the continent. As part of this effort, it’s been sending mercenaries to support counterinsurgencies in West Africa, as well as flooding some African states with weapons. We look at Russia’s arms exports to Africa’s largest economies and compare them to military exports from the US and China.
Libyans are seen through a Kingdom of Libya flag during a celebration rally in front of the residence of Muammar Gaddafi at the Bab al-Aziziyah complex in Tripoli on September 13, 2011.
What We’re Watching: Libya’s future, Russia vs UK in Black Sea, US blocks Iranian news sites
Peace in Libya? Representatives from several outside players with a stake in Libya's future are meeting in Berlin with the country's interim unity government to chart a path toward peace after a decade of bloody internal conflict. Since 2011, the energy-rich North African country has been split between areas controlled by the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord and the Libyan National Army, a militia headed by warlord Khalifa Haftar. It's long been a proxy war as well, with Turkey backing the GNA and Gulf states and Russia supporting Haftar. One major concern is what to do with the 20,000 foreign troops currently in the country, which include Turkish soldiers and Syrian fighters on Ankara's payroll in Tripoli, as well as Russian mercenaries. Western powers want the Turks and Russians to withdraw their forces, but Ankara and Moscow would rather wait to see how things play out. Another thorny issue is how 75 UN-appointed Libyan lawmakers will agree on the legal basis to hold a general election in December without a constitution in place. We'll be tracking progress on both.
Black Sea shenanigans: Moscow says it happened, London says it didn't. Who ya gonna believe? Russia claimed Wednesday it had fired warning shots and dropped bombs to scare off a British warship near the Crimean coast. As the Russians tell it, the Brits beat a hasty retreat, but the UK denies that anything of the sort happened at all. As they tell it, the warship was unbothered as it conducted "innocent passage" through Ukrainian territorial waters. And there's the rub — ever since Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, the Kremlin considers the waters in question to be its own, and Moscow gets very prickly about NATO ships showing up there. Regardless of whether shots were fired or not, the incident underscores how fragile relations between Russia and the "West" are, even after that Biden-Putin summit last week which was meant to smooth things over.
US swipes Iranian news sites: The US Justice Department has taken down 33 Iran-affiliated news websites for allegedly spreading disinformation among American voters before the 2020 US presidential election, and another three for links to an Iranian terrorist group. Although the websites are owned by US companies which did nothing wrong, the DOJ has legal basis to shutter them because the Iranian entities did not register the domain names with US authorities — a breach of US sanctions against Iran. All of this happens as Americans and Iranians continue to renegotiate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, with both sides, as usual, playing hard-to-get. Iran's new President Ebrahim Raisi doesn't want to meet Joe Biden, but we all know that it's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — who still wants to make an agreement but doesn't want to seem too eager — who will have the final say.