How truth bombs for Russians may end the war
A popular Russian commander bursts the lies that justified the invasion of Ukraine. Despite his failed mutiny and exile, his truth-telling may ricochet in the war trenches.
Members of the Wagner Group military company sit atop of a tank in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, June 24, prior to leaving an area at the headquarters of the Southern Military District. A weekend revolt by Russian mercenary forces has undermined President Vladimir Putin's power, setting the stage for further challenges to his rule at home and possibly weakening Russia’s hand in the war in Ukraine.
AP
In Ukraine, officials have begun to closely track the morale of Russian soldiers on the front line – indeed of all Russians. The reason: In a moment of truth-telling on June 23, one of the most successful and popular commanders of Russian forces, Yevgeny Prigozhin, told his country on social media that the Kremlin’s rationale for the war is bogus and that top security officials are corrupt.
Perhaps uttered simply out of anger – Mr. Prigozhin’s militia was about to be officially subsumed into the Russian military – his revelations could feed into rising anxiety among Russians about their future. In late May, 53% were worried about themselves and loved ones, according to the Public Opinion Foundation. That is up from 43% just a few weeks earlier.
Mr. Prigozhin’s utterances and then his troops’ takeover of a strategic Russian city and march toward Moscow have since left him in exile. Yet his words and actions may have removed the scales off the eyes of many Russians. They saw President Vladimir Putin forced to negotiate with a former close associate and to ask another country, Belarus, to mediate in the crisis. These actions leave cracks in the facade of Mr. Putin’s claim that he is the paramount source of stability.
The world has seen “that the bosses of Russia do not control anything,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after the mutiny by the militia, known as the Wagner Group. “And what will you, Russians, do? The longer your troops stay on Ukrainian land, the more devastation they will bring to Russia.”
Truth bombs like those from Mr. Prigozhin often alter the course of wars. Think of the release of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. Or the discovery that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the public rationale for the 2003 American invasion. On the social media app Telegram – popular among young Russians – Mr. Prigozhin said that Ukraine and NATO did not intend to attack Russia, as Mr. Putin alleged, and that the need to rid Ukraine of Nazis is a “pretty story.”
Nearly two-thirds of Russians would support ending the conflict in Ukraine and moving to negotiations, according to a late-May survey by the Levada Center. After last week’s revelations by Mr. Prigozhin, “I imagine a lot of [Russian soldiers] currently deployed in Ukraine will be thinking long and hard about how enthusiastic they should be fighting,” retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of American forces in Europe, told Newsweek.
For a while, lies to justify a war can be as powerful as military arms. Yet truth can help end a war as much as weapons might. Ukraine, where citizens demand truth from their elected leaders, is watching closely to see if the Russian people shed a passive acceptance of Kremlin lies and instead embrace the truth.