Consider This from NPR - Putin's Hold on Power

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

A week on from an aborted uprising, Vladimir Putin is still standing. But for how long? The brief rebellion, launched by the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin, marked the greatest challenge to Putin's rule since he came to power, 23 years ago. The mercenary leader is now in exile in Belarus and no charges are being filed against him or his followers. So where does that leave Putin, who has a reputation for being ruthless with his enemies? In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail]. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine unleashed chaos across the region. Now the turmoil has come to Russia itself. And even for a leader known for crushing dissent and enforcing consensus, Putin can't hide it from his people. I think there's been incompetence and dysfunction in Ukraine.

Now we see incompetence, weakness, and dysfunction at home. John Cipher once ran Russia operations for the CIA and is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center. He told NPR that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prokhozhin's rebellion has left Putin with some tough choices. You know, if he lets Prokhozhin go, he looks weak. You know, one minute he's calling him a scum trader, and Prokhozhin shot down Russian helicopters, and the one minute he's calling him a scum trader and Prokosian shot down Russian helicopters. The next minute he's gone. But if he tries to kill Prokosian, that's dangerous too, because Prokosian has shown himself to have some real populist appeal. He has this strong narrative that the Russian leaders are fat cats with yachts and children in Europe, and they're sending Russian

boys to be slaughtered in Ukraine. Indeed, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Putin's, claims that he talked Putin out of killing Prigozhin. Here's NPR's Charles Mainz. Lukashenko says he told Putin, OK, we can kill him, no problem, but it's a bad idea. Lukashenko said there wouldn't be any negotiations and Wagner's fighters would strike back. And even though Russia would win in the end, thousands of civilians would die. While Seifer sees dysfunction in the Russian military, he also sees a danger. Vladimir Putin sees Russia as himself, and so he sees threats

to himself as threats to Russia. Consider this. After nearly 20 years of unchallenged rule, an unexpected threat may have long-lasting consequences for Russian leader Vladimir Putin. After the break, we hear from a professor of Russian history who tells us what this crisis has revealed about Putin's hold on power. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Friday, June 30th. message comes from wise the app for doing things in other currencies send spend or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees download the wise app today or visit wise.com t's and c's apply support for npr comes from npr member stations and eric and wendy schmidt through the sch Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. Support for NPR and the following message come

from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. It's Consider This from NPR. A week on from an aborted uprising, Vladimir Putin is still standing. But for how long? Last weekend's events marked the greatest challenge to Putin's rule since he came to power 23 years ago. And on Friday, a U.S. official confirmed to NPR that a top Russian general with ties to Wagner chief Yevgeny Progozhin, who led the brief revolt, has been detained. It's not clear if General Sergei Serovikin supported the uprising, but the ties between the general and Progozhin go back years. We also know that these two individuals see themselves as being in the thick of the war and the struggle.

And they see the elites in Moscow, you know, to be more corrupt, to be not really fighting for their motherlands. And so that creates a certain potential proximity of how they view things. That's Gulnaz Sharafudinova. She's director of the Russian Institute at King's College London. My colleague Mary Louise Kelly spoke with her and started off by asking her take on how wounded Putin is. That's the very big question, right? I like to compare what happened to sort of like a glitch in the matrix. This might be for American audiences. They remember that black cat and the glitch in the matrix that reveals that there is a matrix, right? And we saw that glitch in Russia, you know, things that have been under the radar,

things that have not been shown to the population in their own immediacy, that is the real conflicts that exist among the elites, all of a sudden it was on display. And no wonder now the Russian media system, media managers would be doing a lot to try to diminish the importance of what has happened. And there will be many people who might not even believe that this was a real mutiny, a real challenge to the authority. But many will believe that. And we see in terms of the laughter that's emerging, in terms of the ridiculing patterns and anecdotes that emerge in the Russian social media, we see that people are reacting. And, you know, the very common reaction was that, oh, the emperor is naked. So from that perspective, the leader who has been very successful

in managing conflicts and being an arbiter among different interest groups all of a sudden didn't manage well this time. And that does demonstrate weakness on his part, and that does reveal the reality of the fragility of power, the fragility of the government and their authority. And it cannot not hurt, no wonder that they will try to patch it up. What do we know of how ordinary Russians view all this? What do they make of what's happening? The very early reactions were focused on various types of conspiracies. Many people had a hard time believing that Putin could be challenged in such an open way. So it was a reality that was hard to confront. So various types of conspiracy theories that this was conspired by Putin himself to somehow

increase or improve his hold on power were very prominent and popular, and I think they will remain. But at the same time, the other side of the story is the, I mentioned, ridicule and laughter and the social media creativity that goes on with regards to bringing out various types of clips from films and movies that would make fun of the situation. So it's between laughter and disbelief, and there the many people we interviewed, one young man who told me he loved Vladimir Putin. And when I asked him why, he explained, it's gotten really hard to find a parking space at my apartment building. And what he meant was that under Putin, a lot more people could afford to buy a car. The quality of life had gone up. Does that hold as you look at Russia in 2023, which finds itself, as I know you have written, in an economically precarious and internationally isolated position? Yes, absolutely. The truth about Russia's growth and the percolation of that growth down to the grassroots was true up until 2013 or so, starting from 2013.

And certainly after 2014 and the sanctions and the reaction of the Russian economy to sanctions, it has been a downward trend. They tried to maintain some degree of stability. But in terms of economic growth, that's not there. What the state and what the government is trying to do is to focus on government subsidies and social support and social benefits. So they are trying to fight poverty by addressing the families with children, et cetera. But we are not talking about new cars. We're not talking about new housing. We're talking about, you know, whether there is bread on the table. So do we have any insight into what President Putin is thinking, what his next move

may be? We're all watching out for how the consequences of this event will play out. You know, people are expecting repressions. You know, some of the revengeful acts might take some time. But this is something that we will be looking out for. And it is hard to say what exactly, you know, will be decided at the moment. digestion that will happen and soul searching within the government, within the security services and sort of looking around and then taking some action. So we are all on the watch out for those. Has he signaled in any way that this mutiny might cause him to rethink his war in Ukraine? No, that we haven't seen. What we have seen is the attempt to patch up this open sort of challenge that was revealed and to patch it up with rhetoric of popular unification behind the president, the army saving, you know, the government and the country. And yet again, the message of the West, the evil West that's trying to fragment Russia that is out there looking for Russia's weaknesses.

So all those messages, to a certain extent, have been there, and they are being used again. But at this time, you know, we see this as the band-aid that's being put on the events. One question to leave you with, and it's this. I saw one former U.S. diplomat, Elizabeth Shackelford, quoted on recent events, and she said her central question now is, is Putin's biggest battle not with the West, but with his own people now? What do you think? I would say that Putin's biggest battle is on the front lines in Ukraine, and the outcomes of that battle and the perceived loss or success in that battle will determine his relationships with both the people and the elites in Russia. That's Gulnaz Sharafudinova, who teaches Russian politics

and is the director of the Russia Institute at King's College London. She's also the author of the book The Red Mirror, Putin's Leadership and Russia's Insecure Identity. She spoke with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.