Submission Statement

Stephen Kotkin is a highly respected Russian historian. This interview did an excellent job situating Prigozhin’s insurrection within the broader context, both in terms of Russian history and the war effort as a whole. I was particularly struck by the comparison of this to 1917, where security measures taken to stabilize the country unintentionally accelerated its collapse.

Stephen Mark Kotkin is an American historian, academic, and author. He is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

Key points:

Prigozhin is improvising, but his successes have already changed the game.

Social media is a massive X-factor for modern governance. This coup was executed more on smartphones than on the streets.

Instability is being watched closely by all powers, but especially China.

Allowing an alternative to arise was a colossal mistake, not what Kotkin expected from Putin.

Ukraine is presently ill-positioned to take advantage of Russian instability, but that could change as rifts in the Russian military/government continue to deepen.

Right now, Western powers need to stay out, lest Putin paint Prigozhin as a Western puppet.