Editor’s Note: Keir Giles (@KeirGiles) works with the Russia and Eurasia Programme of Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in the UK. He is the author of “Russia’s War on Everybody: And What it Means for You.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.
While the dust starts to settle from Yevgeny Prigozhin’s abortive march on Moscow with his Wagner mercenaries, details of the deal that brought their short-lived insurrection to an end remain incomplete and confusing.
In fact, anybody who says they’re not bewildered by the situation plainly hasn’t been paying attention. But while the short-term impact of the challenge to Moscow’s authority is still playing out, the long-term consequences for Russia are far more clear.
Both President Vladimir Putin, and Russia itself, have been shown to be far weaker than they would like to pretend to be. The sight of Wagner columns apparently being waved through on their way to Moscow, and calmly breezing in to occupy a key military headquarters while holding coffees, has exploded the idea that Putin has a firm and unchallenged grip on power throughout his own country.
And the ability of a group of armed insurrectionists to roam southern Russia unchallenged has highlighted the Russian state’s lack of capacity to deal with challenges beyond the front line of its war on Ukraine.
That doesn’t mean that the Ukrainian army could similarly roll up the highway to Moscow unopposed. But it does show that the Kremlin and its forces are divided and uncertain – and that success for Ukraine in the war may be more easily achievable than thought before Prigozhin showed up Russia’s vulnerability.
Crucially, it also doesn’t mean that Russia is at imminent risk of collapse or “fragmentation.” Prigozhin could not have mounted a direct challenge to Putin’s power even if he had wanted to – and furthermore, regimes in Russia have a tendency to survive their own evident dysfunctionality for far longer than expected.
The opportunity for Ukraine lies, instead, in the effect this should have on its coalition of Western backers.
What the Wagner showdown means for ‘negotiated settlement’
This proof of the fragility of Russia’s resistance demolishes a key argument for pushing Kyiv into a ceasefire or “negotiated settlement.”
The argument ran that, since it was unlikely to be possible for Ukraine to deal Russia a convincing defeat and evict its forces from Ukrainian territory currently under savage military occupation, Kyiv would eventually have to seek peace terms – and the sooner it did so, the better.
It’s a line that’s often accompanied by nonsensical arguments for Ukrainian “neutrality,” ignoring both past history and current reality. But the key impact of all of these proposals would be to hand Russia victory and reward Moscow for its aggression.
The appearance of slow progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive hasn’t helped. Senior figures in Kyiv have been careful to manage expectations both before and after major operations began. And military analysts have begun to discern the shape of what Ukraine is doing, and agree that success shouldn’t be measured just by movement of the front line.
Nevertheless, it’s vital for Ukraine to show progress and the prospect of an end to the war in order to maintain its coalition of support and head off these continuing calls to accept defeat – especially in light of suggestions that Kyiv has one shot at clear success before being pushed into negotiations.
Instead of planning for defeat, the West must redouble support
The Prigozhin adventure shows that the prospect of collapse of Russian resistance held out by Ukraine’s more optimistic supporters could be closer than thought. But this has to be set against the fear that Ukraine’s efforts might have been fatally compromised by delays to supplies of war-winning military equipment, primarily by the US and Germany.
Those delays represent a stunning success for Russian information campaigns, primarily nuclear intimidation. But they also point to a circular argument by Western politicians who, whatever their reasons, are not fully convinced of the need for Ukrainian victory.
Planning instead for defeat risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy – the thinking goes that Ukraine hasn’t been given enough military aid to defeat Russia, therefore it cannot achieve victory, therefore we should plan for a stalemate and negotiations, therefore there is no point in increasing military aid to Ukraine.
What the Wagner showdown demonstrates is that, instead, now is the time to redouble support to Ukraine. Now is the moment to make up for lost time and take advantage of the evident faltering within Moscow to achieve the convincing defeat of Russian aggression that is essential to - at least temporarily - remove the threat to Europe.
This doesn’t just mean meeting Ukraine’s immediate and crucial needs, such as the means to continue to deny Russian air supremacy. It also means lifting all of the artificial constraints of what Ukraine can do with the weapons they are provided. The nonsense of prohibitions on using them to strike into Russia, for fear of offending Putin, has to end.
Above all, the fear in some Western capitals of Ukrainian victory, and Russian defeat, must be overcome. This week, the Chatham House international affairs think-tank released a report by nine leading experts on Russia and Ukraine (including myself), looking closely at possible outcomes from the war.
Our unanimous conclusion is that the only way to make Europe safer from Russia lies through urgently increasing assistance to allow Kyiv to win.
Arms supplies to Ukraine, and full backing for Kyiv to defeat and evict Russia’s invading army, are an investment in peace.
The best time to make that investment is already long gone. But the next best time is now.