The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - The Russia Coup Part 3: Russia’s Global Footprint || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: June 24, 2023

While the future of the Russian government is very much up in the air, the chances of an outright overthrow are thin. However, the future of the Wagner mercenary group is most assuredly not. That puts every Russian military mission outside of the former Soviet Union in terminal danger. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/the-russia-coup-part-3-russias-global-footprint

Okay, video number three on the ongoing coup slash revolution in Russia. Let's talk about Wagner. Now, according to Brugosan, the leader of Wagner, they've got 25,000 troops, and they've been able to attract a few defecting units from the Russian general military. We don't know if that is true. One of the things about, to remember about Wagner, is it's troops from two sources. Source number one are Russian veterans, particularly people from some of the higher ranks, special forces, Oman troops, Spets, nots,

that sort of thing. They tend to be relatively competent, and so Wagner generally has the best troops and the best logistical capacity within the Russian system. What they don't have is their own hardware. They rely upon the Ministry of Defense for their equipment, for their armor, and their air defense, and they have no air assets at all. No helicopters, no jets. So if you see reports of airstrikes on Wagner, especially if they start moving up to Moscow, you should take those reports very seriously because if you were Putin, that's how you would cut them up. Let them get out

to the exposed on a 10-hour drive to Moscow and just start blowing them all on the road. As we know, if you take out the front echelon and the back echelon, the rest of them just kind of scramble or in a death pile in the middle. That is a very realistic way of how this

can all end, which, you know, unless Pergo's in, is completely stupid, wouldn't do it, but you remember, this is a guy who is a convicted thief and former caterer. is not a military super mastermind. Okay. Anyway, barring a complete collapse of the Russian military structure and political society, which you can't rule out, this is Russia, this has happened before.

Pragyzhen and Wagner really have no chance here. Small number of troops, isolated in a specific part of the country, and while that might be hugely significant for the Ukraine war, they are just too far away from Moscow to make their voices heard in any meaningful, I'm sorry, I phrased that wrong, not their voices heard, to make their desires reality. There's just too much space, too many Russians, and too much air power. That doesn't mean there aren't consequences here, even if this is a massively failed coup.

Ukraine we've already talked about, but what about the rest of the world? Wagner, because it's one step removed from the Russian military, which is part of the problem, has been Putin's go-to tool for dealing with the international system for over a decade. And so almost all Russian military deployments around the world aren't actually regular Russian military. They're primarily Wagner. That's true in Syria, in Libya, in Sudan, in the Central Africa Republic, and on and on and on. And now that there's so many weird ways that this could have gone. This was definitely not one that was on my radar.

But now that Wagner is persona on Grata, every Russian military. Every Russian military base around the world is going to get shut down by the Russians in the next few weeks. That, of course, assumes that countries who are trying to seek favor with Putin don't go against Russian forces at Putin's room. Oh, my God, this is just delicious. Okay. Oh, yeah, I've got to get myself some popcorn for this. Okay, folks, the bottom line here is that Wagner's military capacity is a subset. of Russian military capacity, but the personnel are different.

And so now that the personnel have changed sides, you should expect to see a complete disintegration of the entire Russian global position beyond the former Soviet Union. Within the former Soviet Union, as a rule, it is the Russian military who is in the pole position. But beyond that, wherever it happens to be, it's progosin and wagner that are the face of russian strategic foreign policy and now that that's on the other side of a rebellion that is going to completely die now for those of you who have been worried about the the long duration of russian power this is great because remember wagner is the best troops that russia has it's the sum total it's really the only place that russian vets go to after they leave the regular military and they are scattered around

the world. They are vulnerable. They are now without supplies or fuel or diplomatic cover. They are enemies of the state. It's going to be a wild week, folks. Oh, one more thing. Big question that we don't know the answer to. There are two sources of troops for Wagner, the military veterans and also convicts that they've pulled out of prison to use as cannon fodder. Now, convicts are good as cannon fodder for offensive operations, but they're not good for defensive operations. So, and they're probably not good for sending into, say, like a city like Moscow where there's regular Russian forces either. So basically the convicts have become a non-issue in this.

And so it really comes down to the rest of the troops. Wagner no longer has the ability to recruit. All they can do is try to flip Russian regular military units. That is their only source of troops. So Wagner absolutely has no staying power in this fight. The question is what can they do in the very, very, very short term? They have access to the military stocks around Rostov, and that's it. So this is probably either going to be a mad dashed to Moscow, which would be suicidal, or a protracted defense in Rostov to draw upon the stocks where they can actually defend. Regardless of which those options are, this is fantastic for the Ukrainians, because if it's Option two, defensive Rostov, then all of that equipment is no longer available for Russian trips in Ukraine at all.

They make the mad dash for Moscow. Then we have a very public, very global, very humiliating military rebellion in the heart of Russia and which the Kremlin and Putin are the direct targets. I would expect them to win and win handily, but Russia will not recover from that sort of image. And from a tactical military point of view, if Prozhen and Wagner are making a mad dash for Russia, then forces, the best forces that Russia has outside of Wagner, are in Ukraine. They're going to have to leave Ukraine in order to catch up with Wagner in order to defend the motherland.