Puny Putin has ended up in the Peking duck soup
Russian rebellion sends shock waves through China, highlighting Comrade Xi’s ‘fear of chaos and instability’
Strongman Vladimir Putin has been described as a “lame duck” after the “36-hour” Russian rebellion. But, perhaps, “Peking duck” is a more apt phrase since he will need China and his “best friend” Xi Jinping to retain his grip on power.
Inside the Kremlin, Vlad the impaled is looking more like a puppet than a president after Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group of mercenaries staged a “mutiny” and “marched” on Moscow “for justice” at the weekend.
Academics Stefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko captured the unfolding drama perfectly in The Conversation. “Blink and you could have missed it. Within 36 hours, the challenge mounted by Prigozhin was over,” they said.
“On June 23, [he] ordered 25,000 of his troops to ‘march for justice.’ The following afternoon he called it off,” Wolff and Malyarenko wrote in a commentary.
“The crisis was apparently averted [by] a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and confirmed by the Kremlin. But this brief episode of turmoil will have lasting repercussions for Russia and for the war in Ukraine,” they added.
What happened next:
- Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko made an emergency trip to Beijing to discuss the situation with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
- His deputy, Ma Zhaoxu, said “under the complex and severe international situation,” it was “necessary to safeguard the common interests of both sides.”
- To analysts and commentators covering China, that sounded like an SOS from Moscow.
Xi likely sees the Wagner mutiny as serious incompetence.
Sari Arho Havren of the Royal United Services Institute
Delve deeper: Mikhail Zygar, the author of All the Kremlin’s Men, believes the writing is on the wall for Putin. “There came a moment when Prigozhin was no longer Putin’s puppet. Pinocchio became a real boy,” he told The New Yorker.
Between the lines: “I have the feeling he is not really running the country. Certainly, not the way he once did. He is still President, but all the different clans now have the feeling that ‘Russia after Putin’ is getting closer,” Zygar added.
Big picture: The fallout means the “no-limits” partnership between Beijing and Moscow will be radically changed with President Xi calling the shots after the Wagner uprising.
What they said: “Xi likely sees the Wagner mutiny as serious incompetence. The rebellion clearly dented Putin’s prestige,” Sari Arho Havren, of the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank, pointed out.
Fear and loathing: “The main consequence is how weak Russia’s power structure now appears in the eyes of others. The Chinese Communist Party has a fear of chaos and instability in its DNA,” she said as reported by the independent Moscow Times online.
China Factor comment: What a week that was for Xi. On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden branded him a “dictator” at a fund-raising event in California. On Saturday, his big buddy Putin was scrambling to stay in power. Who said a week is a long time in politics?