Vladimir Putin took a huge risk by launching the invasion of Ukraine – and could now be facing serious domestic challenges because of it.
After all, Moscow has not secured any major battlefield victories recently.
The chief of the mercenaries in the Wagner Group has been speaking out against the Kremlin’s tactics and soldiers on the frontline are struggling and demoralised.
Meanwhile the assassination of a pro-war military blogger has left many questioning if there’s more in-fighting happening in the country than Moscow is willing to admit.
So, where does this leave the Russian president?
According to the Institute for the Study of War’s Russia analyst, Kateryna Stepanenko, Putin is now facing challenges that he has not experienced since he first entered office in 2000.
While none are large enough to destabilise his presidency, these pressures does offer insight into just how many plates Putin is having to spin right now, on top of a war which has definitely not gone to plan so far.
Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group
Yevgeny Prigozhin is a Russian oligarch who has personal links to the Russian president and was once known as “Putin’s chef”.
He’s been making headlines recently for being the financier behind mercenary company, the Wagner Group, for almost a decade – and, as Stepanenko told HuffPost UK, Prigozhin seems to pose “an unusual challenge” to Putin.
He has been openly criticising the Russian military command and the Kremlin in recent months, publicly claiming that victories on the field are down to his mercenaries – not the Russian army – and even accusing the Russian ministry of defence of “treason” for not offering enough ammunition to his troops.
This outspokenness has stunned international audiences, even though Prigozhin has never directly attacked Putin. Could he be looking to seize more power for himself?
Oleksandr V Danylyuk, of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), doesn’t think so.
On RUSI’s website, he explained: “Many observers and even officials mistakenly believe that Prigozhin has a high level of autonomy and can independently make decisions about the group and its applications.”
Stepanenko also said there would be no major consequences of Prigozhin’s outbursts. She explained: “The Prigozhin-Putin dynamic had exposed fractures within the Kremlin, but these fractures are not sufficient enough to threaten the Putin regime at this time.”
And, though Kremlin does still need Wagner to advance the war effort without the bureaucratic drag that comes with the Russian military, the UK’s MoD has claimed that Moscow is actually looking to recruit new mercenary groups to replace Wagner and weaken Prigozhin.
Chatham House’s senior research fellow Nikolai Petrov told HuffPost UK that this process has already begun.
Petrov also said the Kremlin will also deliberately avoid punishing Prigozhin directly for his outbursts.
He said: “It’s almost like under Hitler. To keep law enforcement and power agents and military under control, the Kremlin needs to exploit internal conflicts among them, which makes it easier to control them and manage them.”
The Russian elite
There’s been some speculation – prompted by videos shared on social media such as the one below – that Putin is losing the support of others who are at the top of the food chain in Russia. And of course, without this group, it’s easy to believe that Putin could be ousted from power.
But Petrov believes the Russian elite are actually focused on their own survival – particularly their wealth.
He said there is not even room for manoeuvre for these elites to act against the Kremlin, “whether they do support or do not support Putin”.
He explained: “They cannot unite in order to do something which has not been ordered by the Kremlin.
Instead, he suggested people were focused on their own survival – as they are all on a “submerging” submarine where there is “no escape”.
Petrov added that instead, everyone is focused on their own financial wealth, especially as the war is squeezing the economy and their own wallets.
The general public
The death of the pro-war military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, in a St Petersburg bombing made international news, with some corners wondering if it meant anti-war factions are turning against the war.
However, Petrov doesn’t think so.
While the volume of arms and ammunition inside of Russia will increase as a result of the attack, he speculated that Putin would only lose support if Russia were to give up its current gains – like the Ukrainian peninsula Crimea and the Donbas.
As long as Russia does not become worse off than it was at the start of the war, Putin’s place looks steady.
He also suggested that Putin can spin any other more minor failures on the battlefield to his advantage. For instance, he can say Russia is fighting against NATO and the West as a whole right now – so, despite few victories, Putin can claim Russia is still doing “gloriously”, Petrov suggested.
After all, the war is still pretty peripheral for much of the general public in Russia as battles are being fought in Ukraine.
Petrov suggested that only if something “radical happens before the 2024 presidential election” will public opinion shift – but that’s unlikely, as Ukrainian counteroffensive seems to have slowed down.
Instead, the war has become a long, low-impact conflict, which is ideal for Russia.
“The war is more of a war of attrition. And in Russia’s case, it’s much easier to keep being in the war than for Ukrainians,” Petrov explained.