Prigozhin as Alaric, Lenin and Denikin

Historical parallels vindicate Euclid by never converging. Sometimes they also defy Euclid by almost converging. Hence Evgeniy Prigozhin comes close to being a composite image of the three gentlemen in the title.

Alaric, the king of the Visigoths, turned his Roman weapons against Rome and sacked it in 410 AD. His private army had been in the vanguard of the Roman forces defeating the Franks.

However, though Alaric’s casualties had run into many thousands, he had received little recognition from Rome. The disgruntled general then led his men in a march on Rome, effectively putting paid to the Roman Empire.

Lenin, whose claim to being the greatest modern villain has been undeservedly usurped by Stalin and Hitler, knew that the only way for him to seize and keep power in Russia was to wage war on the Russian people.

Capitalising on the demoralising effect of several frontline defeats, Lenin stated his aim as “transforming the imperialist war into a civil one”. He was as good as his word, plunging Russia into an internecine conflict that killed millions of people and turned the country into ruins. Russia then did a Phoenix and rose out of the ruins as history’s most evil regime, brushing aside even Nazi Germany’s claim to the same title.

In response to Lenin’s challenge, tsarist generals Alexeyev, Kornilov, Denikin and Admiral Kolchak rose in revolt. Denikin’s Volunteer Army, formed in the south, advanced on Moscow in 1919. The Whites took Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh, but then their thrust ran out of steam.

Do you detect the parallels? Like Alaric’s troops, Prigozhin’s Wagner Group of mercenaries have spearheaded Putin’s offensive, specifically the attack on Bakhmut. They suffered heavy casualties, but eventually claimed their Pyrrhic victory by taking that strategically irrelevant town.

Like the Romans, Putin and his people began to fear their mercenaries more than the actual enemies. They treated them with disrespect, which is never forgiven in criminal circles, the true alma mater of both Putin and especially Prigozhin. (The latter spent nine years in Soviet prisons, and not for political crimes either. His stock in trade was fraud and armed robbery.)

Prigozhin has been railing against the Russian high command for months, accusing Defence Minister Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov of deliberately sabotaging his troops by denying them the necessary ammunition.

As Wagner losses mounted, his language was getting more and more obscene, and Russian is ideally suited for that form of self-expression. However, Prigozhin made sure he never aimed his rants specifically at Putin, whose servant and confidant he used to be.

Finally, some three weeks ago, Prigozhin delivered himself of a tirade that sounded as if he had thrown caution into the wind: “They [meaning the Russian generals] blindly follow Grandpa, and Grandpa is a total arsehole.”

‘Grandpa’ is a term opposition journalists use to describe Putin. Clearly, Prigozhin went too far and Putin had to respond.

Respond he did, by reminding his TV audience that private armies are unconstitutional, and we all know how pedantically Putin observes the constitution, chapter and verse. Hence, he continued, all Wagner fighters should disarm and sign contracts with the regular army.

That would have deprived Prigozhin of his power base, which explains why he categorically refused to comply. That insubordination couldn’t go unpunished, and Russian artillery and air force took some pot shots at Prigozhin’s men, killing a few.

The latter saw red and did a Lenin, effectively calling for transforming the wrong war against the Ukraine (not morally wrong, you understand, just wrongly pursued) into a right civil one.

This is what he actually said, and I haven’t seen a more or less complete translation of his remarks in any of our papers:

“They’ve tried to disband the Wagner Group, making it impossible for us to defend our homes… Today, having seen our unbending resolve, they delivered missile strikes at our rear camps. A great number of fighters, our comrades, perished. We’ll have to decide how to respond to that evil act. The next move is ours.”

Yesterday, Prigozhin made it clear what the next move was to be. His private army of 25,000 cutthroats advanced on Rostov-on-Don, took it without a shot and marched north to take Voronezh. This is eerily the same route as the one taken by Denikin’s Volunteer Army in 1919, which should please no end every proponent of the plus ça change concept of history. The ultimate destination is also the same: Moscow.

Those proponents may get further joy from Prigozhin’s statement this morning, again with echoes of the erstwhile Whites. Back in 1918 they had stated their intention to rid Russia of the Bolsheviks and then honour Russia’s wartime obligations to her allies, and Prigozhin’s statement vaguely reflected the same spirit:

“The evil personified by our military leaders must be stopped.” [Note that, though Prigozhin didn’t mention Putin by name, he is the commander-in-chief of the Russian forces, the ultimate military leader.] Those who resist us will be treated as a threat and eliminated immediately… I am asking everyone to remain calm, not to respond to provocation, stay at home and ideally not to go out along our route. After we have finished what we have started, we’ll return to the front to defend our Motherland [meaning to carry on the bandit raid on the Ukraine]… We’ll sort out those who kill Russian soldiers and go back to the frontline. Justice will have been restored in the army and then all over Russia…

“There are 25,000 of us, and we’re going to get to the bottom of the unlimited corruption in the country. Those 25,000 are the tactical reserve, and the strategic reserve is the whole army and the whole country. Everyone who wants to join us is welcome – it’s time we put an end to this outrage… This isn’t a military coup, it’s a justice march.”

There is every indication that Prigozhin’s entreaty is finding a good response. None of the troops and police forces in Rostov put up any resistance, and the city houses the headquarters of the whole Russian southern army.

As I write this, the Wagner troops are within a couple of hundred miles of Moscow, whose mayor has introduced emergency restrictions, including those on the movement of people and transport. Spot searches are being conducted all over the city.

Putin made his own televised address this morning, in which he described the events as exactly what Prigozhin said they weren’t, a military coup. Putin liberally bandied about various synonyms for treason and betrayal, and those were the words his interpreters used in English.

In one instance that wasn’t quite accurate though, for Putin used the word otstupnichestvo, which means apostasy. That introduced a sacral note to the proceedings, implicitly equating Putin’s resistance to Prigozhin with the Albigensian Crusade.

But enough of the historical parallels. Let’s try to understand what it all means. Call it a coup, call it a mutiny, call it anything you want, but the development is hugely important.

Prigozhin has no political or administrative body carrying his message to the masses (like the Whites, and yes, I know I promised no more history). His 25,000 fighters are better than anything the Russian army has, better trained, better motivated, more battle-hardened. But they are too greatly outnumbered to succeed on their own.

Assuming that Prigozhin genuinely wants to do what he says, his chances don’t look good – unless the largely demoralised regular soldiers begin to desert in droves and swell Wagner’s ranks. However, I find it hard to believe that there isn’t some Kremlin conspiracy supporting Prigozhin, secretly for the time being.

The war they started isn’t going well. It’s reasonably clear that, unless Russia goes nuclear, she will lose in the end. And the consequences of going nuclear will be awful probably and unpredictable definitely.

In any case, Putin’s regime in its present state is unlikely to survive any end to the war other than a resounding victory, and that’s not on the cards. This bodes badly for Putin personally: he probably won’t survive even physically, never mind politically. But what about the gangsters who surround him?

They have to be looking out for number one, and I assure you that’s not the good of the country. Their natural instinct has to be putting all the blame on Putin and exculpating themselves. They have to be looking for an alternative leader, and there have been some reports that Nikolai Patrushev, a career KGB/FSB officer and head of the Security Council, has been approached as the potential head of the provisional government (can’t get rid of historical allusions, can I?).

If that offer was indeed made, Patrushev turned it down. It’s quite possible that Prigozin’s ambitions reach as high as that, but he would lack international credibility. His Wagnerians have murdered too many people (some with sledgehammers), raped too many women, castrated too many men, looted too many households for Prigozhin to emerge as a knight in shining armour.

His role is probably that of the battering ram punching through the Kremlin wall and making it possible for others to rush through the breach. That’s accepting his coup on face value.

However, it’s also possible that the whole escapade has been designed by Putin to rally the population whose enthusiasm for the war is flagging. Prigozhin’s advance may enable Putin to introduce a state of emergency and declare a general mobilisation, for example.

The possibilities are numerous, and none of them is especially promising. If the conflict between Prigozhin and Putin is real, then the Ukrainian army will benefit. Its own offensive may accelerate, what with the aggressors fighting one another.

But even if real, the clash isn’t between good and evil but rather between two evils. Both Putin and Prigozhin are equally hideous and criminal, both are implacable enemies of the West. So will be any government formed by Putin’s hangers-on, and I can’t see any other valid candidates.

Still, there is a chance that this squabble may put an end to the massacre of the Ukraine, which has to be seen as a good outcome. But let’s not get our hopes up: Russia will remain a threat for any foreseeable future.

This won’t be a case of a good tsar replacing a bad one. The next Russian government will be a Stalin to Putin’s Lenin. Or else, a Hitler replaced by a government led by Goering and Himmler. Or… well, now is really the time to put an end to historical analogies. You get the picture.