Thread by @khodorkovsky_en

Wagner PMC chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempted military coup was one of the most serious political events to take place in Russia in the last 20 years. Why did it happen, what does it mean and what lessons can be learned from it? 🧵

1. Let’s start with its meaning. For the second time since Putin took power, Russia had a revolutionary situation. The first was the mass protest against the election results in 2011-12

2. Now, for the second time, the democratic opposition failed to take advantage of the situation because it was preparing for different scenarios. The democratic movement needs to learn a lesson: regime change will not come from the ballot box

3. Imagine if Prigozhin had not simply destablilized the situation, but taken power with the acquiescence of democratic forces. He would not have freed political prisoners or declared free elections. So, it’s not elections we should be preparing for

4. Prigozhin’s mutiny demonstrated to the West a likely scenario for regime change in Russia and the political forces that might take over the Kremlin

5. The mutiny was positive and signaled the end of Putin’s reign. But Prigozhin is as much, if not more of a bandit than Putin. Unless the West wants a new bandit in charge of nuclear Russia, it needs to bet big on the Russian democratic anti-war opposition, and grant it agency

6. There are institutions, which are quite representative, on which such a bet can be placed. Such as the Russian Action Committee, which includes a lot of Russia’s most visible opposition figures: ruskd.com/en/

7. If Western authorities recognize opposition institutions as legitimate representatives of Russian society with the associated opportunities, this will help the opposition compete with the militarized national patriots

8. The West must decide whom to align with for Russia’s future. Aligning with Putin and his team is pointless after Prigozhin’s mutiny. The most important result of those events was that Putin was seriously weakened, lost legitimacy and is becoming a lame duck

9. It showed that Putin does not control the country or troops, the population does not believe his myths about the war. He had to run to Lukashenko and Kadyrov for help ending the mutiny, and the people in the captured cities welcomed the Wagner fighters

10. Prigozhin’s march may not have ended with him seizing power, but it did strip Putin of a significant amount of power and brought forward the end of his rule. This is why we cannot say this was all theatrics – it was very real

11. It appears Prigozhin decided to rebel knowing he may lose his private army and, as a result, his political influence and his life. Prigozhin also knew the state of Putin’s war machine and the level of morale of the troops

12. This knowledge led him to understand that his mutiny had a serious chance of success. This is the main takeaway from his march to Moscow. Now the country and the world know it’s possible to rebel against Putin without being put down, because Putin is weak

13. This means regime change is getting closer. And we ALL need to be ready for it.