I think the point is that if you have enough billions, you can use that money to hire people to commit certain sorts of acts of violence that might result in political change.
Of course, if you aim for the Tsar you’d best not miss.
But in Russia, how do you know the Rough and Tumble guys you’re paying aren’t also on Putin’s payroll? Sure, they’ll kick ass and take names on your orders, right up until Putin tells them not to.
Were I such a oligarch, I would only ever hire foreign mercenaries for such work. Were I Putin, I would ban hiring foreign mercenaries for domestic Russian work, just to avoid this risk.
Putin has control of the internal spy departments that have been functioning quite effectively since Stalin created them. There is no one in the country that they could hire that Putin doesn’t already track. If they do try to hire hitmen they will be found out and killed (both the hitmen and the oligarch). Even if they renounce their Russian citizenship and leave the country they will be targeted and very likely killed.
Outsiders coming into Russia are automatically tracked and can be checked and put in their place at any time. Just ask Brittney Griner. Hitmen arriving in Russia to visit an oligarch or meeting with them overseas would stick out. The oligarchs are being watched physically, electronically and by satellite. They know where those yachts are at and where they are going.
It seems that many of the younger generation just cannot understand just how evil Putin is, its beyond anything they have ever experienced. Or people choose to look the other way until it involves them.
I’m not suggesting an oligarch might hire Agent 47 or Carlos the Jackal. I’m suggesting that for enough money, people whose loyalty is assumed to be unimpeachable might actually be purchased.
Anyways, I’m not really expecting this to happen. I just took it to be what’s meant when people talk about the possibility of the oligarchs deciding they’ve had enough.
Realistically I think the greater threat to Putin comes from the pro-war side. Someone like Prigozhin deciding that Putin is playing too nice and using his private army to stage a coup, or the actual army getting fed up with being thrown under the bus every time the Ukrainians make another breakthrough. Also very unlikely, of course.
You can’t hire people who will be willing to die for you. Soldiers will die for a country, they’ll die for an ideology, and they’ll die for a leader. They won’t die for a paycheck.
I would suggest that Prigozhin’s private army demonstrates pretty conclusively that soldiers will die for a paycheque.
Most coups historically have come from within military or security apparatuses.
Where does popular support factor in to any change of government? Here’s a scenario: Putin’s term of office is up in 2024. The longer the war drags on the less popular it will be with the Russian public. The war drags on throughout 2023 as Russians struggle (after additional loss of territory) to achieve a stalemate, and perhaps Putin chooses this time to retire from public life and not pursue a fifth term.
The Wagner Group are mercenaries in name only. They’re a Russian military organization operating parallel to the main Russian Army, like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard or the Waffen SS.
Tell me this: have they ever worked for anyone other than Putin? Do they have non-Russian soldiers?
How does a guy like Putin retire? Isn’t he automatically on everyone’s hit list as soon as he actually does so? Like even if he went into the hospital for actual cancer there would be people trying to kill him before the cancer did.
Wagner Group has worked in the Syrian Civil War, in Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, and possibly other African conflicts (although some or all of these are likely at Putin’s direction). They are known to have had a Serb unit and to have recruited Kazakhs, Moldovans, and other ex-Soviet nationals.
Fair enough. I still stand by my belief that they’re not actually mercenaries, and could not exist in their current format without state support.
Mercenary companies fought and died for money historically, however I think the trick is in the third option @Alessan gave: “a leader”, or as in the Foreign Legion “A sense of esprit de corps”, you create a mistique, imbue it on your soldiers and they’ll die for it.
However mercenary companies are also historically casualty-averse, they may die for their unit, but they’ll try at all cost to avoid it and usually will not fight to the last man.
On the gripping hand not many regular army units would fight to the last man either.
As a destroyer, Cole had no armor. As a “frigate” Admiral Makarov is even smaller that a destroyer and likely has no armor either, but Russian parlance might or might not match NATO’s.
USS Cole damage:
Heck, for all we know the recent rain of oligarchs was for exactly this reason: they were plotting.
Or just publicly complaining.
Russia will eventually collapse if NATO keeps outspending them. Russia is hemorrhaging money. Their stocks of Soviet weapons depleted. The Iranians are extending the war with drones and supporting attacks on civilians.
The Soviet Union went broke and collapsed. Same thing could happen in Russia.
ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 2 | Institute for the Study of War
Who says that Putin will actually pay those men? He can simply announce “sorry, guys, no pay this month–but don’t worry…we’ll give you all your money in form of extra pensions when you retire 30 years from now. I promise.”
this seems like wishful thinking.
The Russian economy may shrink by a billion dollars, the Gazprom company may lose a couple hundred million, but there will still be ,tens of millions of dollars available for Putin and his oligarchs to skim for themselves. And that’s all that matters.
If a quarter million soldiers die, and tens of millions of civilians are unemployed, that’s just fine with Putin. Western economists will proudly declare “Russia is collapsing”–but the only Russians who notice will be the unemployed masses, not the one-percenters, (who are the only people who count. )
Putin is already dealing with protests about the mobilization. He has a firm grip, but trying something like that is IMO very likely to cause a general mutiny among the troops and lots of civil unrest from their friends/family.
fascinating deep dive on the Sevastopol-stunt - and an interesting decoy
that stuff (+kerch bridge + moscva) will keep military scholars busy for years to come