103. Putin's Secret Army: The Coup That Almost Brought Down Russia (Ep 6)

Summary

Podcast Summary

The Rest Is Classified

Episode 103: Putin's Secret Army: The Coup That Almost Brought Down Russia (Ep 6)
Date: November 26, 2025
Hosts: David McCloskey & Gordon Corera

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Overview

In this gripping finale of their six-part series, hosts David McCloskey and Gordon Corera dissect the dramatic rise and fall of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary warlord behind the Wagner Group, and the shocking 2023 armed mutiny that nearly upended Vladimir Putin’s grip on Russia. Through firsthand stories, behind-the-scenes intelligence, and razor-sharp analysis, the hosts unravel the extraordinary power struggle at the heart of the Kremlin—and what it revealed about the fragility and toughness of Putin’s Russia.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Prigozhin’s Rise and Conflict with the Military Elite

• After Wagner's key role in Ukraine battles (esp. Soledar, early 2023), Prigozhin's influence surges; he aspires to a place in Putin’s inner circle.
• Tensions spike as the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), led by longtime Putin ally Sergei Shoigu, downplays Wagner's achievements, inflaming Prigozhin (“my boys are doing the fighting and dying and they're being abandoned by the top brass” – Carrera, 04:03).
• Shoigu cuts off useful contracts and restricts Wagner’s prison recruitment—Prigozhin feels systematically excluded (“Prigozhin can sense that Shoigu is maneuvering against him” – Carrera, 04:18).

2. Escalation, Smear Campaigns, and Brutal Warfare

• The rivalry escalates: MoD backs alternative mercenaries, and a campaign of personal smears (e.g., rumors about Prigozhin's criminal past) surfaces.
• Bakhmut Battle: Wagner absorbs horrific losses, suspected as part of a MoD strategy to weaken Prigozhin (“one theory is that the Russian military is deliberately trying to weaken Prigozhin… by letting as many of his men fight and die as possible” – Carrera, 08:30).
• Discord Leaks: US intelligence reportedly uncovers Prigozhin offering military intelligence to Ukraine in exchange for withdrawal from Bakhmut—a desperate (and likely deceptive) bid for victory (10:03–10:28).

3. Public Defiance and Viral Outbursts

• By Spring 2023, Prigozhin pivots to open, shocking criticism:
  • “Shoigu, Gerasimov, where is the fucking ammunition?” (Prigozhin, via McCloskey, 11:27)
  • Accuses Russian elites of letting regular soldiers die while “their kids party abroad.”
• References to “the happy grandfather” (12:31)—possible veiled shots at Putin.

4. The Mutiny: March on Moscow

• June 2023: Crisis culminates as MoD orders all volunteer groups to come under direct MoD control—Wagner’s independence is over.
• June 23–24, 2023:
  • Prigozhin claims Russian military attacked Wagner, launches the infamous “march for justice” toward Moscow.
  • FSB is caught off guard by the sudden move; military and security services hedge, not intervening against Wagner (22:32–23:49).
  • “He’s improvising… there’s not a plan… it’s part of a negotiation, not a coup attempt” (McCloskey & Carrera, 24:44–25:07).
• Wagner easily seizes Rostov-on-Don’s military HQ—locals even ask for selfies, and regular troops refuse to engage (“everyone is standing on the sidelines waiting to see how this plays out” – Carrera, 26:13).

5. Putin’s Response and Prigozhin’s Retreat

• Putin denounces Wagner’s actions as “stabbing Russia in the back,” invokes civil war fears; Moscow goes into emergency (“…trying to work out how to respond…” – Carrera, 27:54).
• Prigozhin’s convoy rolls toward Moscow, but he remains back in Rostov as his men advance.
• Crucial mediation by Belarus’s Lukashenko leads to a negotiated climb-down: Wagner halts short of Moscow, Prigozhin and loyalists head to Belarus with immunity, no immediate criminal charges (“a sign of Putin’s weakness at that moment” – Carrera, 35:07).

6. Aftermath and Revenge

• Prigozhin’s popularity plummets; Kremlin gradually dismantles Wagner’s empire, leaks humiliating images (wigs, excess wealth, bizarre trophies) to erode his “man of the people” myth.
• Wagner’s Africa operations are taken over by Russian military, leaving Prigozhin isolated.
• August 23, 2023: Prigozhin and much of Wagner’s senior leadership die in a mysterious plane crash (likely a bomb orchestrated by Russian security services “on the orders of Putin” – Carrera, 44:07).
• The killing is deeply theatrical—a public lesson to potential turncoats (“a very public demonstration of how enemies of Putin and the state are dealt with” – McCloskey, 46:35).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“Russia stands on the threshold of a catastrophe. If you don't tighten the bolts, the airplane will crumble in midair.”
— David McCloskey (quoting Prigozhin), 02:24

“My boys are doing the fighting and dying and they're being abandoned by the top brass.”
— Gordon Corera (as Prigozhin’s narrative), 04:03

“Shoigu, Gerasimov, where is the fucking ammunition?”
— Yevgeny Prigozhin (quoted by McCloskey), 11:27

“He says the whole justification for the special military operation, the war in Ukraine, is a lie… wild stuff, isn’t it?”
— Corera, 23:37

“Only people on the Internet will support you. No one will go with you.”
— Prigozhin’s mother, Violetta, via Corera, 26:00

“It’s a march for justice, David. Who wouldn’t join a march for justice on Moscow led by a bunch of ex-convicts?”
— McCloskey & Corera, 24:21–24:28

“For hours you thought, Putin’s going to fall, there’s going to be civil war… and then suddenly, it’s literally over. It’s amazing.”
— Corera, 34:32

“He was a talented person who made mistakes. As if launching a coup or a mutiny was like… a poor post on social media.”
— Corera (on Putin’s eulogy for Prigozhin), 46:54

“These states look stable until suddenly they're not.”
— Corera, 53:02

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Key Timestamps

• 02:24–03:29: Series recap & framing Prigozhin’s ambitions.
• 04:03–05:05: Conflict with Shoigu, birth of rivalry with MoD.
• 08:28–10:28: Bakhmut battle and suspicions of sabotage; shocking casualties.
• 11:27–12:33: Viral videos; open accusations and insubordination.
• 21:25–26:13: The June 23–24, 2023 mutiny unfolds—Wagner’s march, inaction by military.
• 27:54–29:50: Putin's denunciation and Wagner’s rapid approach to Moscow.
• 34:32–35:07: Prigozhin’s surrender and immunity deal—“an amazingly good deal.”
• 43:11–46:54: Prigozhin’s death, theories, and Putin’s message of payback.
• 48:38–54:02: Systemic lessons: autocratic brittleness, risk of empowering mercenaries.

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Analysis & Final Takeaways

• The episode excels at humanizing the paranoia and pressure of Putin’s Russia under internal strain.
• Prigozhin’s arc, from prison-yard bravado to would-be kingmaker to flamboyant demise, exposes not only individual hubris but also the limits of Putin’s “hub and spoke” system.
• Both hosts agree: what outwardly appears monolithic and impregnable (the Kremlin’s regime) is, in reality, brittle beneath the surface—prone to sudden, unexpected shocks when “entrepreneurial psychopaths” like Prigozhin break the rules.
• Putin ultimately prevails, but only after a series of high-risk gambles and compromised stability—“an enterprising… psychopath can potentially do incredible damage” (McCloskey, 53:02).

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For a deeper dive on Putin’s roots and the anatomy of Kremlin power struggles, the hosts invite listeners to explore further episodes at their declassified club.

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This summary captures the urgency, dark humor, and expert analysis of the episode—essential listening for anyone seeking to understand Russia’s shadow wars and those who wage them.

Transcript

[David McCloskey]

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the declassified [e-mail] this podcast is.

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[Gulden Carrera]

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[David McCloskey]

It's better if you kill me, but I cannot lie. Russia stands on the threshold of a catastrophe. If you don't tighten the bolts, the airplane will crumble in midair. Welcome to the Russia's classified. I'm David McCloskey.

[Gulden Carrera]

I'm Gulden Carrera.

[David McCloskey]

And that of course is the Evgeny Prigozhin. And we are now wrapping up our six part series, our deep dive into the life and times and joys of Yevgeny Prigozhin. And in this very last chapter we're going to see how Prigozhin, who's. When we left him last time, his star was on the rise in Ukraine. He's become critical to the war effort. He's building his image and brand back home and I think aspiring to a role in Russian political life and in Putin's inner circle that he feels is his due. And he's going to run into some resistance to that, isn't he, in this final chapter in his life?

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah. The tension is going to be between Wagner, Prigozhin and the regular Russian military leadership, which is going to see effectively Putin's inner circle going to war with itself as well as in Ukraine. And the spark for this is going to be a series of really heavy battles involving Wagner mercenary forces in Ukraine. Wagner's involved in The East Soledar. January 2023. Assault Mining Town. Prigozhins poses there with soldiers and tries to take credit for victory, one of the few that Russia's had. So it's a big deal. And he's saying, I did it. But the Russian Ministry of Defense at first doesn't mention Wagner at all. Prigozhin's furious. His narrative is, my boys are doing the fighting and dying and they're being abandoned by the top brass in the.

[David McCloskey]

Military, taking on maybe what sounds a little bit less like the role of the aloof businessman and more of a father figure.

[Gulden Carrera]

I think father figure's stretching it. It's more the voice of the ordinary person and the ordinary Russian soldier against the elite who are resentful. The battle, as we said, is with Sergei Shoigu, the old friend of Putin. And this rivalry between Shoigu and Prigozhin goes back to 2014. Shoigu is also going to fire a deputy in the Ministry of Defense who'd been the one handing the kind of contracts to Prigozhin. So I think Prigozhin can sense that Shoigu is maneuvering against him. February 2023. There's a restriction on Wagner recruiting in prison. Other mercenary groups are appearing, some under the kind of companies that exist. Prigozhin is kind of angry. The new groups that are arriving make it feel like he's being pushed out of business.

[David McCloskey]

And these are rival.

[Gulden Carrera]

Rival mercenary groups, but more under the control of the Ministry of Defence than his group, Surovikin. General Armageddon, the honorary member of Wagner, gets removed as overall commander of forces in Ukraine in January of 2023. And Gerasimov, the kind of head of the overall military, takes personal charge. So Prigozhin can see the pushback. He's trying to kind of use his media machine in turn, picturing himself on the front line complaining that they're doing all the fighting. He's using the war correspondence, courting them. Directing his anger not just against the top brass, but a kind of corrupt elite is the way he puts it. Interestingly enough, a lot of the focus is on kids. Prigozhin has made a big deal of saying the kids of ministers are off partying, they're living it up while ordinary Russian boys are dying. Then a video of Prigozhin's own children turns up singing on holiday and his daughter in Dubai and places like that.

[David McCloskey]

I'm shocked that he's not genuine on social media.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah. So, exactly. It's, like, revealed. The reality does not match the myth. But so the kind of PR battle is growing. And also there's kind of smears against him. One of the interesting smears that comes out, which gets spread quite widely, is that he'd been sexually abused in prison by other inmates. And a tattooed man says he was a crime boss back in the kind of 80s, you know, when Prigozhin was in prison and Prigozhin had been what's known as a rooster and performed various intimate acts. Won't get into the detail back in the day now. No idea if it's true. Not much sign necessarily, it was true, but it's a kind of sign that the dark arts and the smear campaigns are being turned against Prigozhin himself.

[David McCloskey]

And so, I mean, I guess a year after the war in Ukraine has started, he's lost important patrons inside the war effort. General Armageddon's gone. The bureaucratic conflict with Shoigu at the Ministry of Defense is heating up. There's sparring over contracts, and Prigozhin is losing. Shoigu is trying to create alternatives, mercenary alternatives to Wagner.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And there is a PR campaign that's been unleashed to discredit him. So if you're Prigozhin.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

You're thinking, I've provided all of these services to the Russian state and this is the thanks I get.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, that's the way he thinks. What he doesn't see is a logical person would go, maybe I need to kind of negotiate, think about my position. But he's come from the prison courtyard culture, where you never back down, you always escalate, you always show strength, and that's what he's going to do. And this is all going to kind of come to a head over Another really significant battle over a place called Bakhmut from The winter of 2022 becomes probably one of the most brutal, long running battles of the Ukraine war. The Russians trying to take this back from the Ukrainians, but both sides are going to throw everything at this battle and it becomes an absolutely brutal meat grinder in the mud. From late 2022, the Russians are just throwing these kind of meat waves that we talked about last time of people to take sometimes just 100 meters of land a day for very heavy losses. And the Wagner group are being used on the front line and they're going to be the ones taking the heavy casualties.

[David McCloskey]

You've written about this, didn't you?

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, I wrote about some of these meat waves because I interviewed some of the Ukrainian commanders and they just couldn't believe the way that Russians used their troops. And this is one of the kind of great imbalances between Russia and Ukraine is the Russian side just has a kind of casualness about the loss of life and about throwing troops to die, whereas the Ukrainians have got some of their best troops there and when they die it's a kind of tragedy. Whereas the Russians are just throwing Wagner and prisoners at them. And it's one of the kind of challenges for Ukraine. It's kind of how you deal with that. And By I think, February 2023, the US reckoned that Wagner had about 30,000 wounded or killed, mainly in Bakhmut. And the stories are just kind of grim and people who flee get executed. And it becomes interesting here because one theory is that the Russian military is deliberately trying to weaken Prigozhin and derail Wagner by letting as many of his men fight and die there as possible. Which actually does seem kind of plausible. If you're the Russian Ministry of Defense and you don't like this guy who's on the rise, you just go, we're going to kind of wear him down. Some of the kind of manoeuvrings around here are really interesting and odd. So there's a US intelligence report which gets leaked, something called the Discord Leaks, which claims that in January 2023, Prigozhin tries to negotiate with the Ukrainians and through a back channel secretly and says to the Ukrainians, if they withdraw from Bakhmut and let Wagner take Bakhmut, he would give Ukraine information on Russian troop positions so they could attack them. Now, if that's true, it's nuts, isn't it?

[David McCloskey]

But is it in the big if true category or do you buy it?

[Gulden Carrera]

I don't know, I mean, it could be that Prigozhin was kind of lying to the. You could imagine him telling that to the Ukrainians. Just let me take that back.

[David McCloskey]

And having no intention of following, no.

[Gulden Carrera]

Intention of following through. But he wants the victory of taking Bakhmut because he knows how much is riding on it. So he might be kind of lying about it rather than really planning to do it. But he staked his reputation on taking Bakhmut and he promises to take it by May 9, 2023. Victory Day in Russia. It's not going well. He's thinking that he's not getting enough ammo from the Russian Ministry of Defence. Now, it may be that they're restricting ammo, it may be that they've not got enough ammo. It may be he's looking for an excuse for why he's not winning. But this is where the whole thing starts to unravel and go out of control. 5th of May, there's a video of Prigozhin standing by corpses of his own men. It looks dark and he sounds kind of angry, wild. And he goes, this. These guys are Wagner PMCs that die today. The blood is still fresh. Now listen to me, you bitches. These are someone's fathers, someone's sons, and he's kind of screaming and those pieces of shit. Sorry about the language, that don't send ammunition. Those bitches will be eating their entrails in hell. We have 70% ammo shortages and this is the famous line, shoigu Gerasimov, where is the fucking ammunition?

[David McCloskey]

He's crossing a line here, right? He's crossing a line here. He hasn't done this.

[Gulden Carrera]

No.

[David McCloskey]

Up to this point, complaints would have been private or sort of sent through a third party to leak out. And now he's. He's just doing it directly.

[Gulden Carrera]

And I think it's a sign of desperation. He's not winning as he'd hoped. He's losing men. He's got to blame someone. And this is a big deal because of course, you know, this is supposed to be the special military operation. It's not a war. But this is coming out in Russian kind of media and Russian telegram channels with pictures of dead bodies, which again, you're not kind of supposed to see. So it's kind of crazy. And then there's another video, 9th of May, complaining about lack of shells and ammo. He's saying they're collecting them in warehouses. Instead of spending a shell to kill the enemy and save the lives of our soldiers, they let our soldiers die. And the happy grandfather thinks everything is fine.

[David McCloskey]

That's a Putin reference right there.

[Gulden Carrera]

Right. This is the thing. Who's he talking about? Because there is this kind of talk in Russia that Putin, like his critics, call him grandpa in the bunker. And it's the way that aging leaders in the Soviet Union were kind of referred to as kind of grandpa. Prigozhin will later say that he wasn't talking about Putin. He'll kind of give multiple choice answers. He will never actually say who he's referring to, but he kind of tries to point that it's Gerasimov. He's talking about the military chief. So he'll try and point away from being Putin. But a lot of people assume it is. We'll assume it is. You know, so something's kind of changing. Bakhmut is going to fall. Wagner are going to claim they want it. The Ukrainians are going to say it's not true.

[David McCloskey]

And this is basically late May of 2023, when Bakhmut falls.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah. And by this time, maybe 20,000 Wagner men have been killed in the battle alone. Killed.

[David McCloskey]

And prior to the war in Ukraine, the entire size of Wagner was like four to 5,000 people.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, right. And then it grown to 25,000, and now they've just lost 20,000 in Bakhmut. I mean, they've grown because of the prisoners, but it's brutal. I think this is the moment where he breaks with the Ministry of Defense, partly because it's not going well for him. And he becomes outspoken about the whole war, which is something no one is supposed to do in Russia. But he's escalating. He says the aim might have been to demilitarize Ukraine, but it's had the opposite effect. So he's now starting to criticize the overall decision making, the strategic leadership, the kind of ideas behind the war, not just the Ministry of Defense giving him enough ammo, and he's accusing the Russian forces of deliberately killing his people. May 24, another interview. And this interview is a big one, because he kind of warns if the toll of dead and coffins for ordinary Russians continues while the elite shake their asses in the sun, then the homes of the elite could be stormed by people with pitchforks, you know, and he singles out the daughter of Shoigu, the Defense minister, who. Who'd been spotted vacationing in Dubai with her fiance, a fitness blogger. And he said, you know, first the soldiers will stand up. After that, their loved ones will rise up. There are already tens of thousands of them, relatives of those killed and There'll probably be hundreds of thousands. We cannot avoid that. This divide can end as in 1917, with a revolution.

[David McCloskey]

So this is where. Okay, so throughout the series, we have. We have used Gordon Ramsay as sort of the, you know, a comparison point.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

For what happens if a psychopathic chef.

[Gulden Carrera]

No, no, no. Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Becomes a mercenary warlord. And how the two, you know, are not so dissimilar. And we actually, you know, if Gordon Ramsay's lawyers are listening, we, of course, we have a Gordon Ramsay quote that we've used to demonstrate that Gordon Ramsay also believes that chefs are psychopaths. Okay. So we're. We're on solid footing there.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

But this is where I think the Gordon Ramsay comparison has already broken down. It broke down three episodes ago, but.

[Gulden Carrera]

Now it's definitely breaking now.

[David McCloskey]

It's definitely broken down. But this behavior that we've charted here in the spring of 2023, it would be akin to Erik Prince, who's the head of Blackwater, essentially running a smear campaign against the Bush administration and the Pentagon's handling of the war in Iraq.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah. And a warning of a revolution.

[David McCloskey]

Warning of a revolution.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

If the course of the war doesn't change. And, oh, by the way, this would all be happening with a relative body count in Iraq several orders of magnitude higher. Yeah. And so it'd be much more visceral at home than it. Than it ever was. That would be kind of the equivalent.

[Gulden Carrera]

I think that's true.

[David McCloskey]

Which would be very frustrating for the White House.

[Gulden Carrera]

They would not be happy about it.

[David McCloskey]

They would not be happy.

[Gulden Carrera]

Because he's warning of a revolution again. He's trying to position himself as, like, the voice of the masses against this elite. And he's saying, we must introduce martial law, must have mobilization. He starts saying, I shouldn't have been called Putin's chef. I shouldn't have been called Putin's butcher, and everything would have been fine.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, he sounds exasperated.

[Gulden Carrera]

He's exasperated. Yeah. And he's pointing his anger towards kind of Putin and the overall leadership. And this is hard for Putin because Putin's message to everyone is, things are fine in Ukraine. Special military operation is proceeding. Maybe not entirely as planned, but we're going to get there. Now we get to the kind of final moments where it's really going to descend because the Ministry of Defense, I think, are moving against him. Early June, June 10, 2023, Shoigu Defense Minister orders all volunteer groups, mercenaries, had to sign official contracts with the Ministry of Defense by the first of July. So basically saying we are going to bring all of these groups under our control. Now, that is basically the end for Wagner. And I think it's also starting to get clearer that Putin is going to have to choose. In this increasingly kind of visceral, visible battle between Shoigu and Prigozhin, Putin's going to have to choose sides because those two are kind of warring with each.

[David McCloskey]

Other, which is not something you want to do as the autocrat. Right. We might think of a dictator as wanting to just be dictating, but I think it's better for Putin if these courtiers understand the guardrails and kind of play by the rules and he can kind of balance them subtly having to weigh in.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Publicly.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

In favor of one over the other. This is the sort of final fail safe in the autocratic system. You don't want it to get to this point.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah. But I think at this point, Putin is going to choose. And the problem for Prigozhin is he's not going to choose him.

[David McCloskey]

Maybe there with this fateful choice looming. Let's take a break. And we come back, we will see how it all goes horribly wrong for Yevgeny Prigozhin. This episode is brought to you by Attio, the CRM for the AI era.

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[David McCloskey]

Well, welcome back. It is Friday 23rd June, 2023. I'm sure it was a lovely day and Wagner forces are moving from Ukraine back into Russia, which is not what.

[Gulden Carrera]

You'Re supposed to do.

[David McCloskey]

It's the wrong direction.

[Gulden Carrera]

It's the wrong direction. They're supposed to be going to fight in Ukraine. But this is the moment where Prigozhin realizes he is being locked out. His overall plan of I'm going to force my way into the inner circle. I'm going to kind of get Putin to kind of get rid of Shoigu. He's overplayed his hand. But what he's going to do, he's going to double down. He's not going to back as always, as always, which is the Prigozhin style. Now he's going to claim his camp was attacked by the Russians by missiles and some of his fighters killed. Now, it looks like that was a kind of staged attack or faked, a kind of pretext. One of the interesting things, I think, is that the fsb, Russia Security Service, don't seem to spot what's going on, which I think partly suggests that this is quite an impulsive move. It's not a.

[David McCloskey]

There wasn't a lot of advance warning.

[Gulden Carrera]

There's not a lot of advance warning.

[David McCloskey]

Which also would be classic Prigozhin.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Impulsive.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah. And I think one of the problems, because the fsb, as the kgb, in its time, you know, spent a lot of time actually spying on its own military. Precisely to prevent coups and mutinies but in this case, they don't seem to have had the kind of intelligence within Wagner because it's a mercenary group outside of their control.

[David McCloskey]

Which is even more astounding because one of the larger and most important units or departments inside the FSB is the Senate Military Counterintelligence. Right. I mean, to keep tabs on the people with weapons. Yeah, right.

[Gulden Carrera]

And they failed. And they failed here. And Prigozhin issues a video which is kind of off the rails. Now, he says the whole justification for the special military operation, the war in Ukraine, is a lie. He says the idea that the people in the Donbass, the east of Ukraine, were suffering genocide at the hands of Ukraine and that Russia had to intervene to protect them from an imminent threat wasn't true. You know, what was the war for? He says it was needed so that Shoigu could receive a hero star. The oligarchic clan that rules Russia needed the war. Now, this is wild stuff, isn't it? Because he's undermining the whole basis for this war.

[David McCloskey]

And I guess he's got 25,000 men that in theory, that he says, yeah, could march to Moscow to make a point.

[Gulden Carrera]

It's thought they've got about 25,000 men then. I mean, that's probably a bit of an exaggeration. So he says the evil carried out by the country's military leadership must be stopped. And so he says he's going to restore justice in the military and after that, justice for all of Russia. It's a march for justice, David.

[David McCloskey]

Well, I mean, who wouldn't join a march for justice on Moscow led by a bunch of ex convicts.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, but he's portraying.

[David McCloskey]

I love the fact that cannibals marching back to Moscow.

[Gulden Carrera]

He's trying to make it sound like Martin Luther King or something, you know, like we're on a civil rights march, when in fact it's. Yeah, as you said, it's prisoners and cannibals. And Dimitri Otkin, with his SS tattoos.

[David McCloskey]

It feels like he is improvising.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And that there's not a plan.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

This is why I don't think we should think about it as a coup attempt.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, I think that's right.

[David McCloskey]

I think it's part of a negotiation.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, It's a mutiny is.

[David McCloskey]

Maybe it's a. Mutiny is a better.

[Gulden Carrera]

Word, but mutiny as a negotiating tactic.

[David McCloskey]

Yes. Yes. We will depart the front and march to Moscow to demonstrate that you need us in the hopes of getting to a better outcome with the Ministry of Defense. Right. And Shoigu and that seems like the sort of thing that the FSB's military counterintelligence units, who would presumably be watching Wagner and have sources inside Wagner, you would think, wouldn't really pick up on until it's happening, because there's no high level plan.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, there is. No. Yeah, I think that's right.

[David McCloskey]

There's maybe not even the concepts of a plan.

[Gulden Carrera]

I do love this fact. His mother, Violetta, who we encountered at the start of the story, will later say that when we saw each other before the march, I told him, xenia, that's his nickname, only people on the Internet will support you. No one will go with you. People aren't like that now. No one will come out to the square. Her son replied, no, they will support me. Now, I don't know whether she's misremembering that, but I love it. I love it. Only people on the Internet will support.

[David McCloskey]

Just people on the Internet.

[Gulden Carrera]

It's like the Twitter trolls will support me, I'll get loads of likes, but no one's gonna come out and march.

[David McCloskey]

And then this leads us to Saturday 24 June.

[Gulden Carrera]

And that is so I can remember this vividly because I was in the BBC that day, in the newsroom covering this. And it is one of the more memorable days. It was one of those days where you thought history could turn. You know, this could be the day. And as the day starts and as it unfolds, where you think, this could be the day that Putin is removed from power, in which there's a coup in Russia, in which a civil war starts in Russia. As the day was unfolding, you genuinely didn't know what was going to happen or where it was going to end. Because Wagner forces have moved into Russia. They take the military headquarters for the Southern Command of Russia, which is in Rostov on Don. Best guess is there's about 8,000 troops from Wagner who have taken this. Now, the public, it's so interesting, they don't know what to make of it in the city because ordinary life is going on. Wagner troops are now occupying the city and people are asking for selfies with Prigozhin. When they see them, they're like, it's Prigozhin. You know, he's the kind of nationalist hero. He appears in Rostov in a number of videos. And it's a weird scene because the kind of police are there as well, and also some of the regular Russian military.

[David McCloskey]

It would be confusing.

[Gulden Carrera]

It's just confusing. No one seems to know what to do. And one of the soldiers asks Prigozhin, what are you doing here? And he says, saving Russia, which is his line. But it's interesting, there's no resistance, which also leads to some, you know, wonder, is there some collusion? I think this is the key fact, actually. The regular Russian troops don't wanna fight Wagner.

[David McCloskey]

Why would you even assume that he's attempting a mutiny at this point?

[Gulden Carrera]

But even if he is, do you wanna fight him? He might be the winning side. And I think what we'll see during this day is lots of people basically stand on the sidelines. I mean, in a way, his mother is right when she says, no one will go with you. But it's also true. They're not with Putin. They're not kind of protesting or fighting him. So they are. Basically everyone is standing on the sidelines waiting to see how this plays out. So the Kremlin on Saturday is trying to work out how to respond. One of the most interesting things, video by General Surovikin, who we've mentioned a number of times, General Armageddon. Now, he is an honorary member of Wagner, the Kremlin. Get him to do a video in which he says, I urge you to stop. Now. When you look at that video, remember watching it on the day it looks like a hostage video. You know, he is in a kind of blank room reading to camera, going, I urge you to stop.

[David McCloskey]

That might just be the natural sunny, charming personality of General Army Armageddon, but.

[Gulden Carrera]

I think US intelligence is later gonna think he had advance warning. And I think there is a very logical possibility, which is that Prigozhin is thinking, I'm going to end up Ministry of Defence. Surovikin, I'll make the head of the armed forces. They're in cahoots. But the Kremlin have got to Surovikin first and said, you're going to make this video. You know, there's no way that's going to happen. Now, crucially, at 10 o' clock in the morning, on the Saturday morning, Putin comes out and he denounces those stabbing Russia in the back at a time of war. This is exactly the kind of blow that was dealt to Russia in 1917, when the country was fighting the First World War, he says, warning about civil war. And he says, there's going to be a counterterrorism regime in Moscow. And the organizers of this mutiny have betrayed their own people and their country. And this is a disaster for Prigozhin because if the point is negotiation, pressure on Putin to kind of get him to get rid of Shoigu. It's failed.

[David McCloskey]

And let me guess, Gordon, for once in his life, Yevgeny Prigozhin just turns around and backs down.

[Gulden Carrera]

He goes, yeah, okay, I'll go back. No, instead, just keep on going. He keeps on going because he sends a convoy, a military convoy of Wagner up the M4 motorway from Rostov to Moscow to the capital. He must be hoping that on the way the army, the National Guard maybe will join him. I mean, Moscow seems paralyzed, I think at this point, because one of the problems is they don't actually have defences set up to stop a mercenary force. Where's Putin? I mean, he's done this address, but everyone thinks Putin's maybe fled just in case they make it. I mean there's all these kind of mysterious questions about are there private jets flying out of Moscow which belong to oligarchs and others? Is Putin's presidential jet heading for St. Petersburg? No one knows.

[David McCloskey]

Putin throughout the conflict has sort of moved, floated around regularly down at the Black Seas. In Moscow he's up. I mean, he has place in St. Petersburg too, so could just be.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, it's funny part of doing business. He often has these identical looking offices. So he can be filmed in an office in Sochi or wherever and you won't know where he is, you'll think he's in the Kremlin. So he can move around because his.

[David McCloskey]

Zoom background is the same.

[Gulden Carrera]

His zoom background is the same. So the convoy is making its way up. There's some half hearted roadblocks. Now actual resistance gets to, you know, 200 miles from Moscow. You know, it's only a couple of hours away.

[David McCloskey]

We should say Prigozhin is not in the conflict. Right. I originally thought he stays in Rostov.

[Gulden Carrera]

He stays in Rostov. So he's basically, guys, you go on ahead, you go on ahead. The Russian Air Force flies over and the Wagner team are actually going to shoot down. They've got kind of mobile air defense, at least one, maybe three helicopters and a command aircraft during this. I mean that's a big deal because you're now Wagner mercenaries are killing Russian military. Yeah, this is the moment where you go civil war.

[David McCloskey]

My interpretation of, I guess fence sitting that we're seeing on the part of a lot of Russian military security services, elites are kind of just everyone's looking and watching and waiting to see how it goes down. You can kind of look at it through multiple lenses. I mean, one is, is this actually show some of the strength of the system that Putin has built, that no one actually joins Prigozhin.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And they just kind of sit back.

[Gulden Carrera]

I'm not sure if I'd, I don't think I'd do that if I was Putin. I'd be like.

[David McCloskey]

Or does it reflect maybe some of. I mean, because obviously in an autocratic system like this that there's not a lot of incentive to, to act, to go do things. Right. I mean, Prigozhin is a little different from a lot of these other kind of Russian elites. Right. In that way, because he's, he's very entrepreneurial. He goes out and does stuff. You know, you kind of get the sense that they're hedging. They're hedging for sure. And that it feels like a double edged sword to me because it's helpful to Putin here in that nobody quite knows what's going on. So they don't, you know, there's, they don't join, they're not joining. And yet it's stripped out all of the incentive to go out and actually just take it down. You know, everyone wants to see how it plays out.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

So he gets tremendously, he gets close.

[Gulden Carrera]

And I mean, you know, the world's holding its breath because this is a nuclear armed country which could descend into civil war. In the White House situation room, they're watching it, but they can't do anything. I remember people asking Putin is bad, but Prigozhin and his nationalist friends, could this actually be worse for Ukraine, for Europe and the world? But the key thing, I guess is Prigozhin doesn't want to fight. There's some talk that maybe he thinks he's going to take the Ministry of Defense in Moscow and remove Shoigu and take over. But he's actually on the way. He's still trying to negotiate. This is a negotiating strategy rather than a coup. So he's calling Putin or he's trying to call Putin and Putin's not taking his calls. And then crucially, the person who gets involved is Lukashenko, the president of Belarus. And he's got good contacts with both. So he becomes the kind of intermediary. And Lukashenko tells Prigozhin that Putin will not meet with him nor surrender Gerasimov and Shoigu. And Prigozhin supposedly says, but we want justice. They want to strangle us. We will march on Moscow, says Prigozhin. Halfway there, you'll be squashed like a bedbug. Lukashenko replies. So finally Prigozhin is being told and being Warned. Don't keep escalating because if you do, you're gonna get squashed.

[David McCloskey]

Do you think Prigozhin was on drugs?

[Gulden Carrera]

I think that is entirely plausible, isn't it? I mean, it could be, yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Like this seems like a drug addled fever dream that he's in the middle of.

[Gulden Carrera]

No, I think that's gonna.

[David McCloskey]

Afterward, you know, he's gonna sober up and, yeah, gonna regret some of these things.

[Gulden Carrera]

So finally, I mean, I guess Lukashenko will talk Prigozhin down after a few of these calls and barter agreement. I think Prigozhin knows he actually at this point, can't win. He can't win. So early evening, Prigozhin halts the convoy, effectively gives up Prigozhin, pictured in a black SUV in Rostov, where, as you said, he's been all the time driven away. And very suddenly, very suddenly, this is over. It's over. I just remember it so vividly that for hours you thought, Putin's going to fall, there's going to be a kind of civil war, violence in Moscow, and then suddenly it's literally over. It's amazing. And a deal struck.

[David McCloskey]

And the deal is essentially that Prigozhin will agree to go with any of his men who want to go to Belarus where they'll be able to set up camp. I guess on the face of it, it's not a bad deal for a mutineer.

[Gulden Carrera]

No, I mean, I think it's amazingly good deal, isn't it? No criminal charges at this point, immunity. I mean, you've led a mutiny and you're getting immunity for all those involved. You know, I think it's a sign of Putin's weakness at that moment, because he just doesn't, you know, Putin's been a bit paralyzed in the day, and I think Putin doesn't want to push things too far and actually have a rebellion. So on the 26th, so just a few days after Putin gives a public address to explain it, he's angry and he will say that many men were led astray. He reaffirms they'll now have to sign contracts with the military. Still doesn't name Prigozhin, though. He still can't quite destroy him because after all, I think he's very popular. He's got a lot of fighters, got a popular in the nationalist community. His men are doing kind of important work in Africa. So I think he can't do anything, or at least not yet.

[David McCloskey]

I guess it is maybe one of the bigger unanswerable questions around this whole affair is, is how close they were to some kind of civil conflict.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Because if you look at Prigozhin's behavior through the lens of someone who's maybe drug addled, but certainly making some very impulsive decisions.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

From Putin's standpoint, it could make sense to just kind of like this guy kind of burned out all the steam burned out of this thing. He came to his senses before we had to smash him.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Take Lukashenko's point. You know, don't make us actually have to smash you, because we will and we can. You know, he doesn't get what he wants, Right? He doesn't. He still has to sign a contract with the mod. And Shoigu and Gerasimov are still there. You need to give him a deal good enough for him to take so that you can deal with him.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, exactly. I think that's the key, is that I think the Kremlin knows it's got to deal with him, but it's going to deal with him slowly, you know, and carefully, because I think Prigozhin has to hand back to the mod, some of his tanks and artillery, some of his men transfer. I think he knows it's over for him in Ukraine, but he's maybe still hoping he can do the whole Wagner thing around the world, because he's still got this base in Belarus. But the problem for the Kremlin is that they're going to know that he's got this base and I think they're going to start to discredit him. This is fascinating, Polder. So as you get to June 2023, 58% of Russians fully or partially approve of Prigozhin. So that's in the run up to the coup. Afterwards it's going to drop to 29%. But if you think 58% is really high approval rating, but 29% after the coup. So after he's led a mutiny against Putin, 29% of Russians still, I mean, polling in Russia, let's be honest, it's a bit wobbly.

[David McCloskey]

Also, 58% doesn't seem high for a Russian leader. It seems like the polls would showers.

[Gulden Carrera]

But I just think 29% fully or partially approved after the coup. So I think Putin is kind of calculating. I'm going to put the squeeze on him, but I'm not going to just go after him in one move. So they're kind of starting to dismantle his business empire. They're dismantling the media empire. They're forcing things to be Sold. They're closing down some of the propaganda outlets, so he's only left with his telegram channel. There's going to be a campaign to discredit him. The Russian security services raided his house on the day of the mutiny, unsurprising in St Petersburg. And then photos are going to come out which reveal the luxury he lived in. His private swimming pool, the helipad, the sauna, the gym, the medical office.

[David McCloskey]

You know, the man of the people image is kind of being diminished.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, the idea he's the man of the people versus the corrupt elite. I mean, this is where we get the pictures of him with all the wigs because those get released. But there's also the great, the Sacha Baron Co in dictator wigs, which we look because he had the wigs.

[David McCloskey]

One of the pictures is of the wigs in a big kind of cabinet. Right. Like his storage, his disguise cabinet.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, which we've all got in our houses. I mean, you must have one, David. And they find stashes of gold bars, a stuffed alligator and a framed photo which is purported to show the severed heads of exiled enemies of Prigozhin. And also, I mean, in his own house, a giant sledgehammer with the inscription for use in important negotiations. He's almost like a kind of parody of himself when you say.

[David McCloskey]

I was going to say he's gotten high on his own supplies.

[Gulden Carrera]

Going highs.

[David McCloskey]

His supply. And it also makes me think how different the Russian approach to diplomacy is because he's got the sledgehammer. And in U.S. embassies, in some U.S. embassies, they'll sell in the, you know, the store, a special bourbon. That's called liquid diplomacy. I think the Russians would also approve of that kind of diplomacy.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, but, but the. But the Prigozhin, we don't have sledgehammers going, you know, for a negotiation.

[David McCloskey]

If any American diplomats are listening, I would heartily approve a sledgehammer.

[Gulden Carrera]

As so I think. I think the squeeze is on. He's flying around now, you know, from Belarus to St Petersburg in. It looks like he's just desperate to keep some of his business going around. But he's starting to lose the contracts, including catering for the Ministry of Defence and schools.

[David McCloskey]

They didn't keep him on the catering.

[Gulden Carrera]

They didn't keep him on the catering contact. Africa is his kind of last hope. I think. So the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, gone around Africa to reassure leaders that they'll still get the support from Moscow, even after the Wagner thing. But Prigozhin is Still going out to Africa himself to try and get new deals. He's still kind of pitching, it looks like, that he can to Niger. He can send thousands of fighters. Mid August, looks like he was in Mali, Central African Republic. There's one video of him in the desert with a rifle, but even there now, it looks like he's being kind of shut out of contracts. The squeeze is on and I guess.

[David McCloskey]

He'S lost that luster of the. Even if Moscow isn't the one directing him to go get these contracts, a lot of his African clients would have signed up because they presume that he's got the end with the Kremlin.

[Gulden Carrera]

And now.

[David McCloskey]

And now they know.

[Gulden Carrera]

They know he's not. Yeah, he sees his mother that summer via letter. When I last saw him, he looked doomed.

[David McCloskey]

She will say, I think Mama Prigozhin might be filtering a lot of these quotes back through what's happened since.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, I agree. I'm not sure. I think he probably thought he could keep going or he hoped he could.

[David McCloskey]

Certainly.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah.

[Gulden Carrera]

But then. August 23, 2023, 5:46pm, executive jet tower number RA02795, lifts off from Moscow's airport, heading for St Petersburg. Now, there had been an inexplicable delay for some repair work. Strangely, David, just before the plane takes off, according to one of the crew, cabin stewardess Christina Raspopova, in a text message to her family. And there are also reports that two potential buyers for the jet had been on board an hour just before it departed. Suspicious, perhaps, Some might say in hindsight. But the plane soon reaches its cruising altitude of about 30,000ft, just after 6 o', clock, suddenly goes into a steep dive. Eyewitnesses on the ground say they hear two explosions, see the plane falling, disintegrates in the air, losing one wing and part of its tail. No time even for a mayday call. Crashes. Nearby, a village flames, smoke rising from the field. Now, this is interesting. All 10 people die, including the pilot, the coal pilot, the stewardess, obviously, you know, entirely innocent. But the passengers, of course, include Prigozhin himself and Dmitry Utkin, our SS loving friends, and the head of security and logistics for Wagner, along with two of Wagner's soldiers and two of Prigozhin bodyguards. It wipes out. Basically, the leadership.

[David McCloskey]

Feels like a mistake to have the entire leadership of Wagner essentially flying together.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah. Two months to the day since the mutiny, there's some speculation that a missile took it out. Putin would suggest the crash was caused by Prigozhin and other commanders drinking and using drugs. Back to your point. While handling, juggling grenades on board.

[David McCloskey]

Which this gets back to the. You know, nothing is true and everything is possible. He can say that you just make up something else that's totally ludicrous and then feed that into the state media and there you go.

[Gulden Carrera]

But almost everyone thinks it's a bomb. I mean, there are these theories. That it was faked does seem to be a theme in our podcast. People think someone's not dead. Who is dead. We've had it from everyone from Edward to Tupac. Yeah, he's gone with Tupac. Yeah, he's actually alive and living in Cuba.

[David McCloskey]

But he's dead.

[Gulden Carrera]

He's dead, he's dead, he's dead.

[David McCloskey]

And I guess it must have been elements of the. Or contractors working for the fsb. Fsb.

[Gulden Carrera]

Gru. I mean, gru. Gru. I'd guess gru. Sabotage squads, I mean, but on the orders of Putin, I think. No doubt about that. That would have to be a Putin thing. I mean, they gave it a bit of time, a little bit of two month delay, as we said, to kind of bit of time, bit of space, not make it too obvious, deal with Africa, make sure you've got mercenary groups ready to take over, wind things up. I think it's also Putin is trying to work out what are the risks of taking him out, how's it going to play out. And I think the problem as well is Prigozhin has still not learned his lesson. He's not gone quietly. He's still trying to kind of do stuff. He's still got a bit of popularity. And I think the risk is he could have become the kind of rallying cry again for a kind of nationalist opposition. So I think leaving him around is risky for Putin. He's got a risk.

[David McCloskey]

You have to send a message to others who might in the future consider a similar path.

[Gulden Carrera]

Right, exactly.

[David McCloskey]

That it will be dealt with very directly.

[Gulden Carrera]

There has to be a price.

[David McCloskey]

And it's also possible that the delay of a couple months was that. Yeah, there's probably some attempt inside the Kremlin or the GRU or the FSB to get a sense of how much support he has inside the military, where support or sort of, you know, potential aid may have come during the mutiny. But do you also wait a couple months to get all of these people together in one place?

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, you know, there's a moment of.

[David McCloskey]

Opportunity, there's a moment they're on the plane. It also says something, I think, about the nature of Putin's payback. And Bill Burns, former CIA director, actual friend of the pod. Unlike many of the people we reference as friends of the pod, he's a great friend of the show and was with us for a few episodes. Declassified Club members. You know, he's referred to Putin as a great apostle of payback.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And it's so true. And I think the theatrics are important as well, because Prigozhin has been traveling inside Russia in this couple month period. He could have been arrested.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

He could have been detained. Other members of his entourage could have been arrested or detained. There wasn't really any need was there to kill innocent flight attendants and civilians and to do it in this, you.

[Gulden Carrera]

Know, performance big way.

[David McCloskey]

Right. He could have been just. He could have been quietly murdered at one of his properties. He could have been killed in Belarus quite easily. But they chose a very public demonstration of how enemies of Putin and the state are dealt with.

[Gulden Carrera]

I think that's absolutely right. Putin, on his death, praises him as a talented person who made mistakes. As if launching a coup or a mutiny was like, you know, a mistake. Like a poor post on social media, like they made the odd mistake.

[David McCloskey]

I agree with Putin's assessment, though, don't you?

[Gulden Carrera]

Talented person who made mistakes. Yeah. This is, you know, And Putin will say, I knew Prigozhin for a long time, since the early 90s. He was a man with a difficult fate. He made serious mistakes in his lives and he achieved the results he needed, both for himself and when I asked him about it, for the common cause, as in these last months, he was a talented person, a talented businessman.

[David McCloskey]

He.

[Gulden Carrera]

He worked not only in our country, but also abroad in Africa. It's interesting because they also don't want him to become a martyr because makeshift memorials are going to start to go up in cities on his death candles, things saying, hero of Russia. The fear is he's going to be a cult. So Wagner is going to get dismantled. Wagner operations in Africa are going to be taken over by a new Afrika Korps, slightly unfortunate name, under the military control of the gruff Shoigu, survives only for the moment, actually. Shoigu gets moved on from being Defence Minister, but for the moment, he's safe. And Prigozhin himself buried in St Petersburg a few days after the crash. The city where he grew up, where he started not far from the restaurants where he first met Putin. But it's a private funeral, not much ceremony. They try and keep the location quiet. They even seem to kind of do some distractions so people think it's somewhere else, and some of the journalists go off to. To a different site.

[David McCloskey]

Closed casket.

[Gulden Carrera]

It's a closed casket. Yeah. And very private. In order to prevent that kind of cult of Prigozhin from emerging. And after that, Prigozhin's name is never mentioned in public again.

[David McCloskey]

What do we make of this psychotic caterer turned mercenary warlord? I mean, it must. This whole adventure, I think, does show some of the cracks in the Russian system under the strain of the war, doesn't it? I mean, it reminds me there's, you know, a little bit of a mirror of what the Syrians had to do in the civil war, where you essentially had to turn to militias.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

To make up for real weaknesses in your military. These kind of conflicts show kind of the weaknesses of societies, don't they? And Russia needed to turn to mercenaries, and this is a mercenary who sort of wanted to become something much bigger than himself. And exposed, really, through a system that had kind of been in balance before the war into a tremendous amount of imbalance, at least for a period of time.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. It's a wild story about one individual and ambition and ruthlessness and violence. But it does tell you something about Putin's Russia. I think it does tell you that the system is creaking. And Putin projects himself as this person who brought stability after the kind of chaos of the 90s. And yet here he is with kind of mutiny and coups because partly he failed to manage that court and because people got too big for their boots like Prigozhin. So there's a world of kind of rivalries and power and tussles for power beneath the surface of what looks like a kind of autocratic system, which were revealed by Putin under that pressure of war and mobilization. Yeah, Prigozhin got out of hand, and he had to be reined in. But I think he did reveal something. You know, Prigozhin is a kind of. He's no everyman. He's not the ordinary man of the street.

[David McCloskey]

He has some man of the people.

[Gulden Carrera]

Vibes, but he does have some man of the people vibes. You know, he's got the kind of prison background. But I think what he showed was that there was a part of the Russian population who are angry and who feel like they've been screwed over by the elite, who feel angry, for instance, at the way the war's been run, who are angry over corruption by the elite. He kind of hit on something which is Real and visceral. I mean, it's a Russian nationalism, but also a kind of anti elite feeling. It's a hatred of the corruption. Now, of course, he was part of the corrupt elite, maybe not the inner circle, but he was part of that too. But I think he became the voice of something quite interesting, which also exposed how kind of remote and fragile the Putin court is, because it's full of kind of rich, corrupt people who are kind of distant from the population. And I think that is showing something about Russia, which is important and potentially dangerous and unstable.

[David McCloskey]

Think finding the right words to describe the system is a challenge because it certainly looks stable. This mutiny aside. I mean, when you look at the Putin system from the outside, there are a lot of things we could put together, a whole list of factors that make it seem stable. Putin controls the security services. There's, you know, sort of multiple kind of praetorian units that he can use for his own personal security. He seems to have control over the military. Right. I mean, there's all these different kind of elements.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

In an autocracy that you kind of go down the list and he's like, check, check. Right. I think what this episode shows with Prigozhin is that there's an inherent brittleness.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

In these autocratic systems where they're stable until they're not.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah. I think that's.

[David McCloskey]

And then a little bit of imbalance in your pressure in your elites.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Creates a lot of pressure on the system because the whole thing has been set up in this kind of hub and spoke model. Putin is right at the middle, and everyone else kind of doesn't know what the others are up to. And Putin is balancing all of them against each other. In a normal system, you might have expected the military to act to just stop this right away. Instead, they hedge, and instead they hedge.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And so if you're Putin, I mean, that's kind of the way the system is supposed to work. But when that brittleness is exposed, there's this. There's this moment where an enterprising, you know, psychopath.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Like Yevgeny Prigozhin, can potentially do incredible damage.

[Gulden Carrera]

Yeah. It shows kind of Putin is a kind of detached figure, in a sense, not the master strategist. Not all powerful, but weak. Requiring kind of ruthlessness sometimes to just be able to hold this together against the threats that lie out there. So, yeah, I do think it really does tell you something about the nature of the. I think you're absolutely right. These states look stable until suddenly they're not. Putin will know that a lot of people hedged on that day, on that Saturday, that the military and everyone didn't come to his aid. He knows that. And I think he is fundamentally a weaker figure than we give him credit for. And I think it also shows be careful about mercenary groups and giving mercenary groups lots of power. The Russian states privatized all these things and created alternative power centers. And if you create a private power center in the form of mercenary warlords, be careful because it might come back to bite you.

[David McCloskey]

See, I agree that Putin would understand that there was a lot of hedging. I also think that that's kind of what the system is designed to do and that you don't necessarily want, you know, your sort of mid level military officers, your colonels and whatnot, to be acting without orders, direct orders from the top. I mean, it can cut both ways. But I kind of think to some degree, I mean, this is definitely the biggest, the most significant elite challenge to Putin since he took power. And he survived it. His sister survived it. He managed through it. Prigozhin's dead and Wagner and his empire has sort of been cut up and parceled out.

[Gulden Carrera]

And Prigozhin is never mentioned again.

[David McCloskey]

And Prigozhin is never mentioned again.

[Gulden Carrera]

I think that's maybe a good place to leave it. Just a reminder, we've got a special series on the declassified club which you can join@the restisclassifier.com where you can hear us. Look at the kind of emergence of Putin as a KGB officer and a lot of the kind of roots of this story in terms of St. Petersburg and Leningrad under the Soviet Union and then transitioning into Russia. That series is there for club members.

[David McCloskey]

That's right. We've done the perpetrator in Prigozhin.

[Gulden Carrera]

Now the victim, Putin, Putin the victim.

[David McCloskey]

The exploration of the victim.

[Gulden Carrera]

No one's ever called him that.

[David McCloskey]

That's right.

[Gulden Carrera]

But thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you next time.

[David McCloskey]

We'll see you next time.

[Gulden Carrera]

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