Editor’s note: Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
The events that unfolded in Russia over the weekend transfixed and baffled the world. There’s still much we don’t know, after the Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin sent his Wagner Group forces on the road to Moscow in what looked like the start of an attempted coup or even a civil war. The short-lived rebellion prompted a furious reaction from his patron, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the usually cool modern-day czar.
There’s a reason the most common official statements across the globe were along the lines of “We are monitoring events.” And yet, beneath the thick fog of rebellion, a few things were starkly visible. Or — should I say? — invisible.
In a brief, angry speech to the nation on Monday night, Putin claimed the mutiny ended because “the entire Russian society united and rallied everyone.” Pointing to “civil solidarity,” he insisted that the “armed rebellion would have been suppressed anyway.” But those comments do not jibe with what the entire world witnessed.
Where were the crowds of Putin supporters? Isn’t Putin the president with consistently stratospheric approval ratings?
Over my many years in the news business, I have witnessed multiple coups, attempted coups and insurrections. Several times when I was on staff at CNN, I was awakened by a phone call instructing me to head to Moscow that same day because a coup was underway. Rapid deployment to Russia became almost routine. The word “putsch” entered my vocabulary.
In 1991, I was in Moscow with Wolf Blitzer and a team of legendary, brave and brilliant CNN journalists when the KGB, working with the defense minister and other top Soviet officials, tried to depose Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who was attempting to reform the Soviet Union in a futile effort to prevent its collapse. The coup leaders imprisoned Gorbachev in his vacation home in Crimea.
The coup plotters imposed a curfew, but the people ignored it. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets, building barricades and defying the tanks.
Our CNN Moscow bureau was teeming with action. Crews came and went. We worked around the clock, as we always did with major breaking news. The world could see on CNN, in real time, what was unfolding in Russia in real time. It was history in the making.
The local staff was more tense than anyone. For us, it was a major news event, a geopolitical turning point. For these Russians, it was their life, their country.
This time, Russians seemed largely disengaged. Incredibly, even Muscovites joked about getting popcorn to follow the drama, as Ukrainians unsurprisingly did.
The 1991 coup was put down by the Russian people, led by the democracy-embracing newly elected president of Russia, the most important republic in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin famously stood on a tank, defying those who would stop Russia’s transformation.
Gorbachev returned to Moscow; Yeltsin and the forces of democracy had emerged victorious. A few days later, Ukraine declared its independence.
Large crowds have helped defeat coups in other places. In 2016, tanks rolled into the streets of Ankara, the Turkish capital. The military announced that the administration of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had “lost all legitimacy.” The Turkish people were — and still are — deeply divided about Erdogan. But even many of his opponents rejected the notion of a military coup. Protesters rushed out, lying in front of tanks, climbing on them to force them to stop. Erdogan survived.
Similarly, supporters also saved Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez in 2002 after military leaders forced him to resign.
It should not escape notice that the failed coups did not weaken Erdogan or Chavez. Erdogan purged the military, academia, the courts and the police, removing his critics. The coup gave him the excuse he needed to solidify his hold. He called it “a gift from God.” He has now started his third decade in power. Chavez, too, stayed in power until his death a little more than a decade later, and his handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro, rules Venezuela today.
Putin may well use the experience to tighten his grip and exact revenge.
But if he wants to remove supposed loyalists who did not stand with him, he may be busy for a very long time.
It wasn’t just everyday Russians who seemed uninterested in defending their president – even after he appealed to citizens to join forces in a fiery Saturday morning speech decrying Prigozhin’s “treason,” without naming him, and warning that “Russia is fighting fiercely for its future” against “a deadly threat to our state, to us as a nation.”
Prigozhin’s mercenaries entered the key city of Rostov-on-Don — headquarters of Russia’s southern command, which directs the Ukraine operation — without facing any resistance. The people shook hands with Wagner fighters and brought them food and water.
Wagner’s march toward Moscow seemed to face little resistance from the military or from the people. And later in the day, when the drama seemed to end as suddenly as it began, and Prigozhin ordered his forces to reverse course and leave, some of the people of Rostov sounded downright disappointed, warmly cheering their departing invaders.
Just as Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine revealed the incompetence of Russia’s once-respected military, Prigozhin’s rebellion revealed the hollowness of Putin’s support.
And yet anyone who thinks Putin’s weakness heralds a future of democracy and peace for Russia and its neighbors would do well to hold off on plans to put champagne on ice.
Putin has all but crushed the liberal, democratic opposition. Its most prominent leaders have been assassinated, imprisoned or driven into exile. Huge numbers of Russians, including Putin critics, have left the country.
Prigozhin, who was cheered, is a convicted criminal. Sure, he revealed that the invasion of Ukraine was launched under false pretenses, that Ukraine and NATO were not a threat to Russia. But his main criticism is that the corrupt army has been incompetent and that it should fight harder, better against Ukraine.
Russia — a nuclear-armed country — is now more unstable than it was before this past weekend. Putin will likely try to crack down and show that he’s still in control. But how much support does he have? How many other would-be strongmen will plot to overtake him? At the same time, the prospect of change opens up other avenues, including more positive ones.
With every coup, every revolution, every uprising I’ve witnessed, the inescapable reality has been that we don’t know how it will end.
Russia remains an enigma, and the events that just transpired are still shrouded in mystery. If even the recent past remains a mystery, the future is even more unknowable.