Well it took two months, but the inevitable happened this week: Yevgeny Prigozhin, one time chef and later war-criminal extraordinaire for Vladimir Putin, was publicly executed in the most extraordinary way. While flying on his private jet with the upper echelon of his Wagner Group, he was shot down by a Russian military operated anti-air system.
For a short period there were the weird but expected rumours circulating, asking if Prigozhin was faking his own death, or asking if the Ukrainians did it. The answer seems clear, however. Putin had Prigozhin executed for his armed mutiny two months ago. Always go with the simplest explanation.
Not pressing Russia fully because Putin could conceivably be replaced by someone worse is probably the stupidest of all the self-deterring ideas
That Putin did this should surprise no one. He has regularly assassinated, usually in very public and often gruesome ways, those who have represented political threats to him or those he views as a traitor. It seems that in this case he needed a few months to neutralize the Wagner Group as much as possible, to replace its influence in places such as Africa with loyal henchmen, before he acted. This was completely rational, and completely psychopathic.
Considering the predictability of this execution, hopefully one thing it will do is end the (frankly bizarre) discussion that has been raging since February 24, 2022 — over whether someone worse than Putin would take over if he fell from power. This discussion is one of the regular tropes that has been used to warn against pressing Russia too much in Ukraine — as if pushing Putin out of power would result in someone or something worse.
This discussion has never made sense to me for a number of reasons. For starters, the answer is more than likely “no.” It’s also based on a strange notion of warfighting — the desire to overly control or micromanage events. It needs to stop now.
It might be worth discussing these problems in turn.
First, it would be really hard to be “worse” than Putin. He is the person who choose over all others to launch this monstrous war in the first place. He is a bloodthirsty, expansionist dictator who regularly voices culturally genocidal ideas and is willing to slaughter hundreds of thousands (and millions if need be) to achieve his goals. This war was his choice, it did not have to happen and indeed many parts of the Russian state seemed terrified about it.
Moreover, since Putin started the war, what have we seen? We have had mass executions of civilians, child abduction on an industrial scale, and a Russian willingness to sacrifice their own soldiers in historic numbers to satisfy Putin’s personal wishes. Putin also regularly denies the existence of the Ukrainian people and of their state, and has so shaped the Russian cultural discourse that genocidal ideas are now a regular staple of the evening news. Here is a sample clip showing how often it is now stated on Russian television that Ukrainians need to be wiped out:
The execution of Prigozhin removes one of the players who some people argued might be worse than Putin. But guess what — Prigozhin lacked Putin’s ruthlessness when the time came. He stopped his march on Moscow, and seems basically to have handed himself over to Putin — who did what he was always going to do.
Indeed, if you look at who Putin is now surrounding himself with (the Shoigus and Gerasimovs of this world) you will see that he prefers weak and pliant characters who will do his bidding. Putin is the executioner in chief, the person responsible for all this blood and genocide, and the idea that there is someone worse (while conceivably possible) is actually hard to imagine.
Moreover, even if there is someone worse or as bad waiting in the wings, that person would most likely need time to consolidate power (and fight off other rivals) if Putin falls. This would be an ideal time for Ukraine to either have success on the battlefield or for the new Russian leader to try and cut a deal to protect his rule. The idea that Putin would be replaced by someone worse who would then jeopardise their position by expanding a war that is already a disaster is very unlikely.
Second, people need to stop basing their decisions on the flimsiest of hypotheticals. One of the stranger aspects of the discussion over how to help Ukraine is the way Ukraine’s allies have placed artificial constraints on themselves. This has led both to the slowing of military aid (first Ukraine was given no heavy artillery, then no tanks, and then no F-16s, and then no tactical missile systems) and to endless agonizing about what Ukraine should be restricted from doing. Each one of these limitations was based on the idea that they would be seen as too escalatory by Putin, and would result in some extreme response such as the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Of course, nothing of the sort has happened. Each time one of these artificial red lines has been crossed, it has made no difference. It turns out that we were self-deterring the whole time and in doing so have made the war longer and bloodier.
Not pressing Russia fully because Putin could conceivably be replaced by someone worse is probably the stupidest of all the self-deterring ideas. It’s almost certainly not true, completely untestable and actually ends up creating an interest in keeping Putin in power — which is truly bizarre. It also, in a way, justifies his actions. You are basically setting up an intellectual world where having Putin stay in power is a good thing. It isn’t.
Third, we need to stop micromanaging the war. This is a long-term bugbear of mine. War can’t be controlled like some drama with a script. It’s hubristic and pointless to think it can be.
Even if we wanted to keep Putin in power (even writing this makes me blanch) we lack that power. If we have learned anything over the previous decades, I hope it is that trying to control the political fate of other states is almost always a disaster — and can actually make things worse. Maybe we would end up keeping in power one of the worst rulers in history. Or maybe we would simply extend his rule for longer, which makes his fall worse.
Once again, the best thing the US and other supporters of Ukraine can do is help Ukraine win the war as quickly and fully as possible. It will save the most lives and help people around the world. The idea that a Ukrainian victory should be delayed because of a fear of replacing Putin is probably the worst idea out there. As the killing of Prigozhin indicates, he almost certainly is the worst ruler imaginable.
This article first appeared in Phillips’s newsletter.
