Wagner, Two Years On

Kamil on Coups and Power

How does Russia prevent uprisings, and what can other authoritarians learn from Moscow’s methods of coup control?

For the second anniversary of the Wagner uprising, ChinaTalk interviewed London-based historian Kamil Galeev, who was also a classmate of Jordan’s at Peking University.

We discuss…

• Why the Wagner Group rebelled in 2023, and why the coup attempt ultimately failed,

• How Wagner shifted the Kremlin’s assessment of internal political challengers,

• Similarities between post-Soviet doomerism and the American right,

• Historical examples of foreign policy influenced by a victimhood mentality,

• Barriers to Chinese hegemony.

Listen on your favorite podcast app.

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Why Russians Don’t Rebel

Jordan Schneider: Kamil, can you explain the Wagner insurrection that happened two years ago in Russia?

Kamil Galeev: The Wagner coup attempt in summer 2023 was perhaps the lowest point for Russia during the course of this war — the biggest moment of internal instability. It made a profound impression internally and changed the priorities and policies of the ruling regime.

How did the coup attempt become possible in the first place? Before discussing that, we need to examine why coups haven’t been more common in Russian history prior to the Wagner insurrection.

The primary reason is that since 1917, the modern Russian state has carried direct, uninterrupted institutional continuity. Since the October Revolution, the Russian Armed Forces have been heavily co-opted, which is easy to explain.

Imagine you’re Lenin, Trotsky, and others taking power in 1917. You’re constantly comparing yourselves with revolutionaries of the past, most importantly the French Revolution, but also the English Revolution. What pattern do you see?

You see English parliamentarians taking power from the King and waging war. As they wage war, they create an army, a military force that eventually overthrows them. The same happens with the French Revolution — National Assembly deputies take power and wage war, but the powerful armed force they create ultimately overthrows them.

The pattern they observed from history is that the English Revolution ends with Cromwell and the French Revolution ends with Bonaparte. This became their primary fear for their own revolution.

They took massive, systematic precautions against this outcome. In Trotsky’s memoirs, My Life, he describes discussing an officer of the Red Army called Blagonravov, who performed admirably. Lenin had a strong reaction when Trotsky remarked that Blagonravov, if translated into Italian, sounds like “Buonaparte.” This may seem paranoid, but it demonstrates their deep concerns.

“‘Out of such a lieutenant,’ I had once said jokingly to Lenin, ‘even a Napoleon may come some day. He even has the right name for it: Blago-nravov, [In Russian this means “good-natured” or “good-mannered.” - Trans.] almost like Bona-parte.’ Lenin laughed at this unexpected comparison, then he grew thoughtful, and, with his cheek-bones bulging even more, said very seriously, almost threateningly, ‘Well, I think we’ll manage the Bonapartes, don’t you?’”

~ Leon Trotsky, My Life p. 317

When building the Red Army, they were constantly obsessed with the possibility of Bonapartism, scanning for potential Bonapartes and weeding them out. From the beginning, the Red Forces, from which the Russian army naturally inherits, were extremely optimized to prevent any coup attempt.

This explains what the KGB was all about. You don’t build an enormous, all-permeating, all-powerful state security apparatus merely to fight dissidents — that would be overkill. You don’t even build it just to suppress rebellions. You build the KGB to infiltrate the army, control it, and if necessary, suppress armed insurrections. It’s essentially a second internal army to control the first.

Since 1917, Russian military development has been heavily optimized for this specific purpose. All armed forces, either in the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation, were heavily infiltrated by state security agents with double and triple layers of control. The system was designed so that, first, you cannot prepare an insurrection in secrecy, and second, you cannot execute one because these layers of control would be activated.

State security agents were embedded in every unit, regiment, and army. They would simply eliminate a general who attempted anything subversive. This system worked effectively in preventing military coups, which may explain why the Russian state remained internally stable through the 1990s, despite poverty, lack of resources, and extreme discontent within the military. Many officers were upset, but taking action was impossible.

The interesting thing about Wagner is that it may have been the first military unit since 1917 that avoided this state security infiltration, escaping these double and triple layers of control.

Wagner famously recruited people with various backgrounds — former military officers, police officers, customs officials, drug control agents, and prison guards. Interestingly, they even recruited ethnic Russians from the French Foreign Legion. However, they didn’t recruit state security personnel for obvious reasons — if you start recruiting former state security officers, you’ll quickly be completely infiltrated by current state security officers.

Why was this allowed to happen? It seems like a completely irrational decision for the political leadership. To answer this question, we need to view it not as a single decision but as a sequence of consecutive decisions.

The creation of this large, non-infiltrated force without checks or control layers didn’t happen instantly. It evolved over time, iteratively. Originally, Wagner was a small unit of mercenaries, primarily for special operations far from Russia’s borders — in Syria, Libya, and eastern Ukraine.

A member of the French Foreign Legion displays Wagner-affiliated patches, December 2022. Source.

Early Wagner was small — dozens, then hundreds of fighters who were usually far away, sometimes thousands of miles from Russian borders, with some veterans in reserve at home. These reservists lived normal lives in Russia until called upon. At any given moment, the force was small and mostly distant, which allowed it to largely bypass direct control, partially because it wasn’t considered important.

The enormous expansion occurred only in 2022. Before the Ukraine war, Wagner was essentially an assassin group or hit squad. When the initial invasion failed massively, the political leadership tried to improvise new tools, mobilizing whatever resources they had. At this point, Wagner was authorized for massive expansion.

This wasn’t part of the original plan. When Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border, Wagner wasn’t there. After the initial invasion failed, they mobilized whatever they could — they called reservists, recruited other people, and soon began mobilizing prisoners.

Before long, they went from having a few hundred fighters mostly in Africa or Syria to tens of thousands relatively close to Russian borders. As this happened rapidly, normal control mechanisms weren’t established. The most basic control would have been oversight by state security officers and possibly the Federal Protective Service, who are essentially Putin’s bodyguards.

When the political leadership eventually tried to impose stricter control by integrating Wagner into the normal military structure, the uprising began.

My point is that although creating a large, uncontrollable structure seems irrational for the leadership, that’s not how it happened historically. First, they created a small structure where additional control layers seemed unnecessary. Then, when the situation deteriorated dramatically, they had to improvise with tactical responses to tactical problems, dealing with consequences later. This happened through many iterations, not just one.

Wagner’s rebellion represents perhaps the greatest internal threat to the regime in decades. Not only during Putin’s rule, but including through Yeltsin’s era as well. There hasn’t been a military rebellion of this scale probably since the October Revolution. It was the most serious internal political threat. The question is, why did it evaporate and turn into nothing?

There could be several valid answers to that question. One possibility is that the Wagner group never actually intended to take power. It was most probably a negotiation attempt rather than an effort to overthrow the political leadership and replace them. It appears to have been an attempt to renegotiate their position, perhaps as a reaction to being taken over. They tried to avoid the imposition of additional control through a show of force. It didn’t work out, but they likely never aimed to overthrow the leadership from the beginning.

This may actually be a common occurrence. Many rebellions and revolts don’t initially aim to overthrow leadership but rather to make specific demands. However, in many cases, these still bring disastrous consequences. Why didn’t this one?

Another valid explanation is that they were positioned too far away. Were there any Wagner garrisons in the Moscow region? Had there been, events might have unfolded differently.

The main reason, however, is that the dirtiest secret about military coups is that successful ones are typically invited. In most cases, it’s extraordinarily difficult to execute one without invitation. The creation of Wagner as an independent and uncontrollable armed force didn’t happen overnight but resulted from an accumulation of many tactical decisions over time.

The common image of military officers secretly preparing and then executing a lightning strike to seize power is largely fictional. In most functional regimes, this approach simply wouldn’t work. For the military to successfully take power, they typically need to be invited or solicited.

Jordan Schneider: Kamil, would you apply a Nazi Operation Valkyrie analogy here? How would you classify that within the solicited versus unsolicited framework?

Kamil Galeev: Consider the Eighteenth Brumaire — probably the most famous and iconic military coup in history, when Napoleon Bonaparte came to power. The important understanding here is that it didn’t happen in a vacuum but culminated a long process.

Since at least the Thermidorian Reaction, the political leadership in France had been using the military to control political processes. They deployed troops to deal with armed rebellions in Paris or popular mutinies. When afraid of losing elections, they used troops to “correct” electoral procedures and break the opposition. When wanting to purge political opponents from parliament and the National Convention, they used troops.

This happened repeatedly. Early in the French Revolution, the use of force was disguised as popular rebellion. Eventually, it became undisguised military force. With each passing year, the government ruled increasingly through explicit military force.

The problem was that as this progressed, the leadership became more dependent on the military. When Bonaparte took power, the coup wasn’t even his idea. It originated with Abbé Sieyès, a political leader who wanted to achieve personal political goals using the military — just as the political leadership had done many times before. This last time, however, it backfired.

What we see isn’t a single coup but many “mini-coups” where political leadership repeatedly corrected political outcomes through military means. In doing so, they gradually invited the military to take power. Examining history, we could find many more examples of this pattern.

Jordan Schneider: The Nazi analogy might be more appropriate than the 18th century Brumaire comparison. There was a war going poorly, with generals realizing their leader was unstable and deciding action was necessary. Many senior Nazi leaders supported the plan, but it failed simply because the bomb exploded on the wrong side of the table.

Kamil Galeev: That’s an interesting comparison with Wagner, noteworthy for both similarities and differences. One key distinction is that the officers who attempted to assassinate Hitler were pursuing what they perceived as a common interest, not personal gain. Many of these officers actually owed their careers to Hitler, so they weren’t motivated by professional setbacks.

The Wagner coup attempt, however, clearly pursued particularist interests. They were essentially protesting against being taken over and demonstrating their force. The first case involved belief in a common good — the second lacked this motivation.

Another obvious difference is that the Nazi coup plotters actively tried to eliminate Hitler and arrest Goebbels, attempting to seize political leadership directly. This wasn’t really Wagner’s approach. Their action resembled a negotiation more than a takeover. The officers who tried to kill Hitler weren’t seeking concessions or privileges, while Wagner was.

The third difference is that Nazi officers were part of the regular military structure, while Wagner operated as an irregular mercenary force. Many Wehrmacht officers could be seen as part of established elites predating Hitler, whereas Prigozhin and his organization were entirely Putin’s creation.

This last point is particularly important because, unlike the Nazi officers within the normal military hierarchy, the Wagner phenomenon only became possible through Yevgeny Prigozhin’s personal connections. Though a junior member, he belonged to the same network as Putin. The creation of this force didn’t happen overnight but through several iterations, succeeding because Prigozhin was integrated into the same contract network.

In Russia, there exists an informal personal network of Putin’s longstanding friends from St. Petersburg, including oligarchs who rose to prominence under his rule, such as the Rotenbergs. Prigozhin appears to have been a subordinate of the Rotenbergs, placing him just one step removed from Putin — a trusted man of Putin’s trusted man. This position gave him access to the sovereign’s ear and allowed him to be entrusted with matters outside normal processes.

Vladimir Putin and Arkady Rotenberg, both judo black belts, train in Sochi in 2019. Source.

One thesis I want to develop later is that power is often misunderstood. Power largely represents one’s social metric status within the contract network. In highly centralized systems, politics revolves around gaining the ruler’s ear at any cost. I believe we’ll increasingly see elements of this in the United States as well, where informal contact with the supreme ruler will matter more and cost more.

Infected by Victimhood

Jordan Schneider: Kamil, how did this experience change Putin and the regime’s calculus going forward?

Kamil Galeev: Somewhat paradoxically, the regime appears to have become relatively more relaxed about civilian threats. After the coup, there seems to have been a recalibration of what constitutes a threat. Dissident groups were effectively downgraded in threat assessment, while state security and intelligence services focused on dealing with Wagner’s aftermath and monitoring potential opposition from armed entities, including those within the regular military.

Essentially, following the coup, significantly greater emphasis was placed on monitoring potential threats from individuals with weapons, regardless of their agency affiliation.

Jordan Schneider: Kamil, what impressions do you have of what’s happening in America right now?

Kamil Galeev: One impression — and this is not so much an analysis as a genuine observation — is that it feels oddly familiar. I grew up in Russia, born in 1992, and much of the Russian atmosphere of the 1990s and 2000s was characterized by a pervasive feeling of resentment. There was a widespread belief that we had been screwed over, ripped off, and victimized. This mentality fueled a desire for revenge in some form.

This feeling of resentment and victimhood has been the major cause of what outsiders might perceive as irrationality in Russian foreign policy. When you feel like a victim, when you believe you’ve been abused and treated unfairly, you often declare a crusade against a cruel world that has mistreated you. This is a common occurrence both among individuals who feel victimized and start attacking everyone around them, and among nations.

The deep resentment and sense of defeat in Russia and post-Soviet countries made them behave in counterproductive ways. This was somewhat explainable because Russia lost the Cold War and consequently acted as a sore loser, which typically means acting irrationally.

Now I sense the same feeling of resentment and a similar atmosphere in America. There’s this notion that “we have been mistreated, we have been ripped off, and now we’ll take revenge.” This is much less comprehensible to me because America didn’t lose — it actually won. I can understand how this sentiment emerged in Russia, but it’s much more difficult for me to construct a functional model of how it developed in the United States.

Consider the trade war, for example. You could argue that decoupling from China serves American interests, which may indeed be the case. However, it doesn’t appear that America is simply decoupling from China — it seems to be attempting to decouple from the entire world simultaneously. This doesn’t resemble a reasonable or rational plan; it looks more like an emotional reaction, an attack against everyone at once.

The only explanation I have is that this behavior stems from a sense of victimhood, which leads to attacking indiscriminately. Within the American conservative movement particularly, I observe an incredible feeling of resentment. Yet it remains puzzling to me how this emerged as a mass phenomenon in the first place. America is the richest large country in the world, yet a big portion of the population sees themselves as victims, abused by everyone.

Jordan Schneider: That’s the world we get to live in now.

Kamil Galeev: Yes, but again, it’s a puzzle I don’t quite understand. In the UK, where I live now, there’s a sense of decline in the standard of living — not necessarily in absolute terms, but in relative terms. Not so long ago, the UK was much wealthier than almost any continental European country, particularly before World War I or even World War II. That’s no longer the case.

But the American situation feels especially puzzling. Perhaps one takeaway is that it’s very difficult to monitor the sense of victimhood within yourself, because once you become infected by it, you begin undermining yourself through your own actions.

Jordan Schneider: Are there any historical examples of victimhood mentality unwinding itself and a new conception or national purpose taking its place?

Kamil Galeev: I’ll avoid modern examples as they would generate too much controversy. Instead, I can offer some more distant historical ones.

We often discuss the problems and madness of Nazism and Nazi decisions, but it’s difficult to ignore that much of German foreign policy was established long before the Nazis rose to power. Consider how hostilities with the United States developed during World War I with the Zimmermann Telegram. Germany sent a telegram offering Mexico a portion of the United States. Even though the British intercepted and published it, few believed it because it seemed so absurd. Then the German ambassador confirmed it and repeated the threats, which led to hostilities with America and ultimately contributed to Germany’s defeat.

This may be the most illustrative example, but when examining German foreign policy before and during World War I, it appears they were actively collecting enemies worldwide. Finding a rational explanation for this behavior is challenging, but this pattern was evident in early 20th century Germany long before the Nazis came to power. This mentality certainly made their policies, particularly foreign policy, much less effective.

To condense it into one formula, if you perceive yourself as a victim, ripped off by a cruel world, then the entire world becomes your tormentor. Launching a crusade against the whole world might sound like a perfect plan, but it inevitably leads to conflicts you cannot possibly win.

Jordan Schneider: Kamil, would you like to share your reflections on China?

Kamil Galeev: If we were living in a conventional world, comparable to 100 or 200 years ago, I would say China appears to be the next world hegemon. This is partly because China has taken over much of global material production and is rapidly improving and expanding into other sectors. In almost every sphere of the material economy, and increasingly the digital economy, Chinese companies are outperforming nearly all competition. Typically, this is how a future global hegemon behaves.

However, we now live in a fundamentally different world from the past, most notably because it is aging and will soon be shrinking quantitatively. When the Netherlands became the economic hegemon of Western Europe, they were booming and expanding. It was a young, rapidly growing country. England during the Industrial Revolution and throughout its 19th-century hegemony was also young and quickly growing. The small manufacturing cities of England were booming with people, particularly young people. The same applies to America in the 20th century.

Now we’re entering an interesting phase where most industrial countries will be shrinking quantitatively and, more importantly, aging. How this will unfold in this new era is unclear. Perhaps the most serious problem facing China is that it appears to be aging faster than other nations.

The most logical solution for them would be to ease their stance on immigration, bringing in more people — and to be cynical and candid — particularly facilitating the inflow of women. The fact that they haven’t taken steps in this direction leads us into unknown territory. I don’t fully understand what will happen when the number of young people falls below a certain minimum threshold.

Jordan Schneider: To close, what are you researching right now?

Kamil Galeev: Currently, I’m primarily interested in coups and power dynamics — how political power is gained and lost. My main topics of interest are the October Revolution and its consequences, as well as the French Revolution and its aftermath. In the coming months, I’ll be writing about Lenin, Stalin, and the Bolshevik rise to power, as well as revolutionary Napoleonic France. Both these historical periods significantly shaped the world we live in today.