Putin’s ‘show of strength’ may be paranoia that could be his undoing
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As threats go, it wasn’t particularly veiled. It was as if Vladimir Putin either couldn’t quite be bothered to disguise his warning, or simply didn’t want to.
The day after Evgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash, he described his formerly loyal fixer as a “talented businessman” who had “made some serious mistakes”.
Putin was asserting himself as the top dog in Russia and if anybody dared to challenge him, as Prigozhin had done in a failed mutiny two months previously, they would also die.
But this show of force may also generate weakness.
Prigozhin was killed on Wednesday with nine other people when his private jet crashed shortly after takeoff from Moscow.
Western intelligence agencies have accused Putin of planting a bomb. The Kremlin has denied this.
From looking so unusually meek on the morning after the coup was launched, pleading for support from ordinary Russians, Putin has now made good on his promise to punish Prigozhin for his treachery.
And many analysts have said that this display of ruthless vengeance strengthens Putin.
“This was expected,” said Prof Nikolay Petrov, a visiting researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
“If you are a mafia leader and somebody challenges you, this guy needs to be punished in a demonstrative way.”
For Andrei Soldatov, an expert on the Russian security services, the death of Prigozhin has also strengthened Putin. He said that it was simply untenable for Putin to allow the high-profile Wagner chief to live after humiliating him in June.
“It makes things more stable for Putin,” he said.
But although analysts said that Putin had to act to preserve the system that he had created, a system that relies on shows of force, some analysts also said that this short-term success may come with long-term consequences.
Psychologists talk of dictators’ “nexus of power and fear”, a trait that runs through history, from antiquity to today.
Roughly, this nexus means that a dictator’s paranoia deepens the longer he holds power and the more this power grows. The more power he accrues, the more he suspects his inner circle is plotting against him.
And when a dictator starts killing his inner circle, his paranoia multiplies and makes him weaker.
“Dictatorial figures throughout history have displayed a paradoxical blend of dominance and fear, revealing a deep-set anxiety about their own precarious state,” wrote Seth D Norrholm, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.
And Putin’s paranoia may be his undoing. Much like Julius Caesar in Rome, he now has to look over his shoulder and keep on demonstrating that he can take tough decisive actions against supposed conspirators time and again, spreading fear and loathing.
Caesar was murdered in 44BC by senators because they were worried about the concentration of power in his hands.
Russia’s security forces are perhaps too pervasive and the elite too fractured and too dependent on the system to launch a successful conspiracy now, but some analysts said that the alleged killing of Prigozhin had narrowed Putin’s options and room for manoeuvre.
For The Spectator website, Prof Mark Galeotti, a Russia analyst and the author of several books on Putin, said that the murder of Prigozhin had pushed the elite and Russia’s ultra-nationalists closer to a still-distant “tipping point”.
“They may well be getting closer to the point at which they consider themselves his hostages rather than his supporters,” he said.
This is an issue that Brian Klass, an associate professor of global politics at University College London, calls “the dictator trap”.
He wrote in the Atlantic magazine that the murder of Prigozhin will backfire because senior loyalists will now wonder if they are next and whether they would be better off leaving the country or living in Russia without Putin.
“In authoritarian regimes every act comes with a trade-off, and those intended to shore up power nearly always wind up undermining it. Short-term displays of brutal strength ensure long-term weakness,” he said.
Putin, in his trademark fashion, preferred to remain aloof in the 48 hours after Prigozhin was killed, almost casually dropping in his barely veiled warning and preferring to be seen hosting collaborators from occupied parts of Ukraine, addressing an international meeting of allies in South Africa via video link and meeting with Russian soldiers in the Kremlin.
The message he wants to give is that it is business as usual, except that the alleged killing of Prigozhin means that it can never be business as usual again in Russia.
“The elite will be thinking what is going on?” said John Foreman, a former British defence attache in Moscow. “Who’s next as Putin searches for Fifth Columnists? This may change their assessment of the risk versus rewards in sticking with the man.”
