Andrew Bolt: Clown-show coup leaves Putin looking like a weak coward

The coup might have collapsed in a day - but the whole fiasco shows Russians unmistakably that Putin’s war has been a disaster.

Russia‘s President Vladimir Putin has been made to look weak and like a coward.

It was a clown-show coup that collapsed in a day, but Russian president Vladimir Putin is left looking like a weak coward, fatally wounded.

Call it a win-win for Ukraine and the West, and huge humiliation for Russia and China. Bad news for Donald Trump, too.

Sure, it would have been satisfying to see Putin dragged from the Kremlin and hung from his heels from a lamp-post like Benito Mussolini.

But no sane person would have wanted Yevgeny Prigozhin to replace Putin when he sent his private army, the Wagner group, hurtling up the road from the Ukrainian front to Moscow on Friday.

Are you kidding? Prigozhin is a thief who served nine years in jail, before making a fortune from restaurants and corrupt deals with Putin’s regime, and then founding the Wagner group to carry out dirty military business for Putin off the books, in Syria, Africa and Ukraine.

The ultranationalist Prigozhin’s real beef was with Russian defence minister Sergei Shoi, and the army bosses he repeatedly claimed were bungling the invasion of Ukraine and starving his 25,000 men of ammunition.

Can you imagine such a thug in charge of Russia and its nukes?

In the end his coup collapsed because Prigozhin was desperate and deluded. He was desperate because Russia’s army command had moved his soldiers out of the action in Ukraine, robbing him of bragging rights, and was now even signing his soldiers into the army.

Prigozhin knew he was losing power and time, so launched his “march on Moscow” to replace not Putin but Shoigu and the army bosses.

A member of Wagner group gestures as he sits atop of a tank in a street in the city of Rostov-on-Don. Picture: Roman Romokhov

But he was also deluded, because he assumed Russian soldiers would join him. Instead, the army’s most pro-Wagner general, Sergey “Armageddon” Surovikin, filmed himself holding a machinegun and warning soldiers to stay loyal to Putin.

By Saturday night, Prigozhin gave in. His troops, then just 200km from Moscow, were told to turn around to avoid “responsibility for spilling Russian blood”.

That’s a win to Putin, but the kind that could finish him, because this fiasco shows Russians unmistakably that Putin’s war has been a disaster since he sent in his army 16 months ago, expecting victory in a week.

Putin would also have been rattled by the lack of opposition to Prigozhin. The Wagner group occupied the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don unopposed, taking over the defence headquarters overseeing Russian operations in Ukraine.

Hours later, more Wagner units rolled northwards into Voronezh, a city of more than a million people halfway to Moscow, with minimal shooting. And kept going.

Putin panicked. He had troops deployed in Moscow, but early on Saturday his own plane was tracked leaving the capital for St Petersburg.

It’s not clear Putin was on it, but what a contrast to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who, with Russian troops threatening his capital last year, reportedly refused an American offer to evacuate him: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

It got worse. On Saturday morning Putin gave a televised address to the nation, calling the Wagner group “traitors” and promising “all those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable punishment”.

But he’s since shown he couldn’t follow through. He instead had the president of Belarus, a Putin puppet, make a deal with Prigozhin: back off, and shelter with his troops in Belarus. No punishment.

Two grenade launchers in a car as local residents pose for a photograph with a member of the Wagner group. Picture: Roman Romokhov

Sure, Prigozhin now looks like the kind of Putin critic who’ll fall from a high window, but Putin knows he’s a marked man, too. How much longer will his soldiers keep fighting for him and his lost cause?

For us in the West, this Keystone “coup” does two good things.

First, Putin’s supporters on the American far-Right will struggle to keep saying that supporting Ukraine is a waste of money and even a danger, given Putin’s supposed strength.

Could Donald Trump, vying to become president again, seriously promise to cut off more military aid to Ukraine, just when Putin is on the ropes?

Second, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping – Putin’s biggest backer – has had a fright.

He’s been preparing his own war, to take over democratic Taiwan. Like Putin, he’s banked on the West being too degenerate to resist, repeatedly announcing “the East is rising and the West is declining”.

But Putin has confirmed that every dictatorship is still more degenerate than our democracies.

Dictators surround themselves with yes-men who won’t tell them where they’re weak. So they tend to overreach, and risk a violent overthrow.

Pray that Xi now takes fright from Putin, and makes Ukraine the last battle of World War Three.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Clown-show coup leaves Putin looking like a weak coward