Yevgueni Prigozhin: Shocked with more unknowns than certainties

The war in Ukraine has been showing us that the failures that we are observing in this year and a half of conflict in terms of strategy have consequences that go beyond the design of the European Security architecture and the military balances in Europe or the relations between Europe and Russia or Ukraine and Russia. The immediate threats are in the East, with a Ukraine that presents us with the dilemma of whether it can win the war in the current circumstances in which NATO helps it but does not fully integrate it, and a Russia subjected to a sanctions regime that circumvents skillfully and whose weakness in the military field - despite the number of troops - is inversely proportional to the propaganda ability of using a narrative adapted to the receiver, which contaminates and distorts reality with the aim of sowing doubts, polarizing societies, sow mistrust in States or undermine the democratic institutions of Western countries. The use of soft diplomacy is a legitimate element of influence projection that all States, to a greater or lesser extent, practice. But historical revisionism to justify punitive actions takes us into the psychological dimension of feelings, the one that has to do with nationalism and the way in which peoples perceive themselves in the face of their adversaries.

When we have not yet overcome the shock and the shock of reality that conventional war is possible at the gates of Europe, and the moral dilemmas that it poses to a wealthy society that is not willing to assume the sacrifices that previous generations did In the name of freedom, democracy and those other intangible abstractions that supposedly define us, we woke up to the fact that an unexpected catalytic element could be an acceleration factor to give a diplomatic solution to a conflict that seemed entrenched. Catalytic element that, if not managed, can have derivatives in Russia's own political and territorial structure, but also, as a domino effect, in global geopolitics, particularly that of the Middle East.

Treason to the Fatherland. Rebellion against lies, corruption and bureaucracy (Prigozhin dixit in a message against Putin and the FSB). How many times has that slogan been manfully used for spurious purposes. Who does not revolt at the idea – risky but calculated – of dismantling the Kremlin's power structures, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the PMC Wagner paramilitary group, must have thought when starting from Rostov-on-Don, the port city on the Azov Sea, headquarters from the base of operations of the Russian army, the march towards Moscow. But the scenario of the fall of Putin and an unpredictable Russia is not desirable for Europe, nor for Ukraine, much less for Russia itself. And if the NATO Summit, which will take place in the Lithuanian city of Vilnius on July 11 and 12, had already planned the design of a road map to strengthen relations with Ukraine and the debate on how to balance the Europeans their relations with China without disturbing their American partners too much, they will have to analyze why Intelligence has once again failed by not foreseeing the destabilization operation proposed by Prigozhin, a peculiar subject who has been collecting heavy and strange material for more than two months troop movements in Belarus.

To be willing to die with his 25,000 men to free the Russian people, the return to his bases and the negotiation process agreed with the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, to avoid criminal charges, and which implies the promise of the departure of Sergei Shoigu from the Ministry of Defense and Valeri Gerasimov from the General Staff - finally unfulfilled - gives the impression that this staging could be a calculated operation, not without risk, of controlled dissidence to define loyalties and manage fractures in their alliances in a a time when the invincibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin was fading and the paramilitaries' strategic dependence on Russia's international projection was decisive.

The Prigozhin rebellion, in any case, has already sentenced the war in Ukraine and opens up an uncertain future in other scenarios where the presence of the Wagners is so decisive, such as Africa and the Middle East. Although it is not clear that Ukraine can capitalize on this moment of lack of control in its favor, Russia in the short term has lost, and whatever the end of the fight between Prigozhin and the military commanders, the Russian army can do nothing without the Wagner militia. Hence the importance for the government of applying the Order of June 10 to place the paramilitaries under the orders of the Ministry of Defense. Damaged or amply strengthened, time will tell us if this riot with more unknowns than certainties leads to a formal coup later on and destabilizes Russia in the sense of collapsing it as we know it, or if it serves to purify all the annoying elements of the past. Good luck if Prigozhin survives and can continue celebrating saint's days for as long as God gives him without fear of looking back. Or for the Ukraine, if Prigozhin uses Belarus as a springboard to lead a group of mercenaries against the Ukrainian forces, which will ultimately serve to entrench Putin in power and escalate the war to a yet unknown level.

In such a complex international world, the privatization of the field of Security poses incalculable risks and opens up very disturbing scenarios. Russia's shady policies in this regard have been a factor in accelerating powers that have proven useful, but unreliable and utterly expendable. Regaining control of decision-making and the monopoly of violence is the president's only guarantee of survival at the helm of a nuclear-powered Russia that does not resist dreaming of the Empire that it once was.