Putin will put his jackboot on the throat of Prigozhin and Wagner – I know from experience

Using brutality to try to stamp out dissent is what the Russian president has done for more than 20 years, writes Kremlin critic Bill Browder

Vladimir Putin has always sought to project an image of strength, reality or not (SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

The first – and most important – thing to know about Vladimir Putin is that he has to show total strength all the time in order to stay in power.

The actions of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary forces, are a direct challenge to that. But Putin’s psychology is the psychology of the prison yard. If you are new in the prison yard you have to show such brutality to make your mark and then keep up that same level to maintain a position at the top. That is what Putin has done ever since he came to power more than 20 years ago.

From assassinating opponents to terrorising anyone that gets in his way – that is the Putin playbook. I have felt it myself as an enemy of Putin and the Kremlin for standing up against him and the corruption in Moscow. Limits do not apply. And when he believes that public dissent is rising, he starts a war. He did it with the second Chechen war as he came to power at the turn of the millennium, he did it in Georgia in 2008 and he has done it in Ukraine.

But that means he is now battling on two fronts. He has no choice but to quash this rebellion and show anyone else that any future rebellion would be suicidal. He has to destroy Prigozhin and Wagner, he has to put the jackboot on his throat.

It is not just about Putin’s political position, it is much bigger than that. If he falls, Putin loses all the money he has stolen, he goes to jail and he dies.

One of the things Putin has always feared is a coup and he has a very loyal praetorian guard – with the best men and the equipment. But one of the keys to this is that this is not 100,000 protesters out on the streets, but 25,000 heavily-armed mercenaries, a totally different problem. The numbers aren’t stacked in favour of Prigozhin, unless the message is so strong that it starts to cut through. But, now he is in this position, it is clear that Prigozhin can only go for broke.

Prigozhin managed to drive into Rostov, which suggests that the loyalty to Moscow of some in the Russian military is not guaranteed. Will Putin’s own troops follow through with his orders? Time will tell. Putin has gone all-in, has basically threatened to kill Prigozhin, but the outcome is not yet clear. Will the Russian forces resist the Wagner fighters or acquiesce?

The Russian public will be waiting to see who the most brutal and powerful man is out of this. For Putin the goal is clear, crush this mutiny and then make sure something like it can’t happen again. The level of paranoia will be similar to Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, what would follow would be a police state and a big purge of opponents – those who he sees as potential threats.

A lot of people who are opposed to Putin are going to hope that this attempted coup succeeds. But that doesn’t mean that the situation in the country will be any better if this is the spark that leads to Putin's fall. There will not be many with a rosy view of the future. Prigozhin, and those around him, are also brutal.

For Ukraine, it is a great opportunity. The chaos that this move by Prigozhin has created is something they will look to exploit on the battlefield – and heap more pressure onto Putin and his military chiefs.

At the crux of the matter though, there is one clear truth. Prigozhin has shown Putin total disrespect. There is no possibility Putin can forgive this – and the consequences will be severe.

Bill Browder is the head of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign and the author of ‘Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath’