- The Wagner Rebellion has weakened Russian President Vladimir Putin, experts say.
- His reduced position could make him even less likely to order a nuclear strike in Ukraine.
- The revolt showed that some military might not even carry out such an order.
Ever since its “special military operation” turned into a grueling war, the Russian government has periodically reminded the world that it is a nuclear power determined to use any means necessary to ensure its existence.
Its underlying philosophy hasn’t changed, experts say — on paper, Russia’s nuclear weapons policy isn’t all that different from the United States’ — but the rattling had a clear implication: back off and don’t help Ukraine retake annexed territory, or the Kremlin might go a little crazy.
In 2022, such an aggressive posture was widely seen as a weakness.
Russia was not necessarily losing the war it had started, but it was not winning it either. Threatening to make life unlivable in Ukraine, and perhaps the world, was a desperate card played by a government that, whatever its faults, continued to be led by a rational actor whose main interest was to rebuild an empire, not to revive armageddon. He was falling for this rhetoric that could make the world scarier, some experts say, because it would demonstrate that such existential threats are an effective substitute for diplomacy.
The brief rebellion led by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries last week reignited fears about Russia and nuclear weapons, raising the prospect that a few thousand convicts-turned-hired soldiers could themselves control the fate of the world.
But the fallout from what appears to have been a failed coup is that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been severely weakened, if not overthrown, with Wagner’s largely unchallenged march to the capital suggesting the strongman may not enjoy the absolute power after all.
A Western intelligence official said the episode had so diminished Putin and demonstrated the limits of his earlier authority that it had “reduced the threat of nuclear conflict,” The Wall Street Journal reported, “since subordinates would be less likely to carry out his orders.”
Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, told Insider it was a catch he had never heard before – but could well be true, with the caveat that even the Russian elite doesn’t seem to fully understand what happened with the Wagnerian Revolt and why.
That said, “if the lack of armed opposition to Wagner’s 800 kilometer uprising occurred because the Russian armed forces refused to obey orders to stop it, this could hypothetically mean that they could also refuse orders to perform other military tasks, including nuclear operations,” according to Kristensen, at least in the case of the use of nuclear bombs in Ukraine.
US officials point out that while Russia’s occasional nuclear strategy may be alarming, it appears to be purely rhetorical.
“We haven’t seen any change in Russia’s nuclear posture,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS during a June 25 appearance, a remark that comes not only after the Wagner revolt but the Russia’s decision to place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
In recent weeks, Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of wanting to sabotage the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. On the eve of the Prigozhin rebellion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia was planning a “terrorist act” there, with his country’s military intelligence service claiming that Russia, which took control of the factory last year, hatched a plan to blow up the facility. , like the Kakhovka dam – a claim that Russia has categorically denied.
It’s an open question whether a Russian commander or intelligence officer would be willing to carry out a nuclear-related order from a man at the top of a wobbly regime, barring a literal NATO attack on Moscow. And Putin himself may well be aware of this, further reducing the threat of impulsive annihilation, according to Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russia’s nuclear arsenal at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.
“It’s not that subordinates would disobey,” Podvig told Insider. “It’s just that giving an order like this requires the president to be in a very strong position.”
For more than 20 years, Putin has projected this image of strength, at home and abroad. Now, however, he presides over a failed war that itself has spawned a failed insurgency, leaving Russians and outsiders alike to wonder if he is truly in control. And that may have made the unthinkable even less likely.
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