Analysis: The West needs to consider the possibility of a political collapse in Russia

The world has just had a glimpse of a tempting, but possibly even more dangerous, future without Russian President Vladimir Putin. Western stakes on the Ukraine war increased significantly as a result.

A riotous weekend that saw Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, blatantly mock the Kremlin before aborting his march to Moscow evoked Russia’s bloody history of revolutions and coups.

Meanwhile, efforts by the White House and its foreign allies to find out exactly what was going on underscored the volatile nature of a war that could rewrite the map of Europe and modern history. Finally, a civil war that seemed ready to break out was averted – at least for the time being.

The Kremlin strongman appeared to wink at a military clash with fighters from the Wagner group – in an act that may preserve his grip on power. But Prigozhin’s affront – and the withdrawal of Putin, who accused him of treason but hours later agreed to a deal to let him escape into exile in Belarus – opened the deepest holes in the Russian president’s authority in a generation. power.

There is now no doubt that the war Putin has unleashed to wipe Ukraine off the map poses an existential threat to its political survival. The rest of the world must now deal with the implications.

“This is not a 24-hour disagreement. It’s as if Prigozhin was the person who looked behind the screen in The Wizard of Oz and saw that the great and terrible Oz was just a scared little man,” former US Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst told Christiane Amanpour of the CNN . “Putin has been forever diminished by this situation.”

Schisms in Moscow and between the government and Prigozhin’s Wagner group – the only Russian fighting force to have had much recent success on the battlefield – may also now evoke an opening for Ukraine, which wants advances against the already demoralized and poorly led Moscow troops in their new counter-offensive.

That would be good news for the West, which has funded and armed the country’s struggle. And there is no doubt that NATO leaders would love to see Putin go, as there is no sign that he will end the war by withdrawing his troops from Ukraine.

For a while, it looked like a faltering autocrat, Russia’s military and rival militia chiefs might end up in a civil war for control of a nation with a vast nuclear arsenal. Such instability and internal strife in Russia would send geopolitical shockwaves around the world.