Why Russia crisis requires US vigilance – and an eye for opportunity

What to do about the 24-hour mutiny launched a week ago by Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is an internal matter for Russians alone to address – as President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have made a point to affirm.

However, the repercussions of such a revealing and – for Russian President Vladimir Putin – embarrassing and destabilizing event are virtually certain to spill over Russia’s borders, senior U.S. officials and international affairs analysts say.

The United States, these officials and analysts add, should anticipate that a weakened Mr. Putin will continue to seek to reassert his control over what looked to many during the crisis like a Potemkin state, and move to reestablish a perception of Russia as a power to be reckoned with.

The U.S., therefore, must prepare for a world where the keeper of the largest nuclear arsenal is unstable and threatening.

The crisis in Russian leadership “is not over. It may have only started, and that means greater uncertainty, more instability, and therefore we are reaching a point of maximum danger,” says Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who is now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

“The concern for the U.S. and others as well is that Russia is turning into an irregular, unpredictable, and rogue-like state,” he says. “The outcome we have to prepare for is that a weaker Russia will try to reassert itself by lashing out with more roguish activities,” he adds. “That is why this is such a dangerous time.”

Helping Ukraine

The U.S. should also be seizing on the moment as an opportunity, others say: to do more for Ukraine, for example, as it pursues its counteroffensive to take back as much Russian-occupied territory as possible.

“What I really hope … is that NATO leans forward on taking advantage of Russian weaknesses right now to push in Ukraine,” says Seth Jones, director of the International Security Program and Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. “This [moment] does present an opportunity to provide a range of assistance on the battlefield.”

Others in Washington hold similar views.

“We should take steps to help the Ukrainians take advantage of the confusion in the upper echelons of the Russian military,” says Luke Coffey, a senior national security fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington. “Of course there are things we can do now to help Ukraine win on the battlefield.”

Moreover, he adds, the U.S. should prepare for the “coming chaos in Moscow” by stepping up diplomatic outreach to Central Asian countries bordering Russia – like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

The “roguish activities” that some like Ambassador Daalder foresee a weakened Russia resorting to could have global implications.

For starters, there is the nuclear threat – something Mr. Putin has already dangled before the world’s eyes, notably last fall as Ukraine’s initial counteroffensive in Russia’s war was making impressive gains. Mr. Putin hinted that Russia, with more than 5,000 nuclear warheads, could be pushed to use tactical nuclear weapons in the fighting.

Ukrainian officials, who have fresh in mind the catastrophic collapse this month of the Nova Kakhovka Dam, are warning Western partners that Russia could destroy the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant it controls on occupied Ukrainian territory.

Authorities in Finland say they are seeing signs that Russia may be planning to resort to disinformation and other unconventional methods to foment instability on the two countries’ long border.

Even the already acute global food security crisis could be further exacerbated by steps a wounded Russia could take, some warn – like ending the United Nations-brokered grain deal that has allowed Ukrainian grains to reach key African and Middle East markets.

NATO summit

Senior U.S. officials have been very careful in their comments on the Russian leadership crisis and the potential steps the U.S. could take in response.

Russia’s crisis “is a moving picture, and I don’t think we’ve seen the last act,” was as far as Secretary of State Antony Blinken would venture in comments Wednesday at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Mr. Putin “has a lot of questions to answer,” Secretary Blinken noted, while adding that the U.S. before this crisis was already focused on confronting a “revanchist Russia.”

But he has also hinted this week that the U.S. and NATO will both be announcing new assistance and cooperation measures with Ukraine in the context of the alliance’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next month.

That new assistance could very well include the ATACMS long-range missile system Ukraine has long pressed Washington to provide, Dr. Jones says, as well as accelerated steps for providing Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets.

Looking more long-term, NATO was already expected to offer Ukraine some form of security partnership short of membership at its summit. But events in Russia underscore the urgency of such a step, some say, and are likely to bolster support for moving forcefully in that direction.

Beyond Ukraine, Russia’s sudden instability and unpredictability have almost certainly moved Russia up on the NATO summit agenda, Ambassador Daalder says. Among other things, plans already in the works for reinforcing alliance-wide defenses, especially in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, will be treated with greater urgency.

“Military alliances are in the business of preparing for worst-case scenarios … and what the recent Prigozhin affair and the fallout proves is that this regime is actually a lot more fragile and unstable than we perhaps previously thought,” says Sean Monaghan, visiting fellow in the CSIS Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program.

“NATO’s job is to have a range of defense plans for a range of contingencies,” he adds, “and I think this will be a big focus at Vilnius.”

Engaging China

Then there is the matter of China and what President Xi Jinping has said is his country’s “unbreakable” strategic partnership with Mr. Putin’s authoritarian Russia.

Now that the U.S.-China dialogue has come out of the deep freeze following Secretary Blinken’s recent trip to Beijing, the U.S. should be laying out for an order-craving and image-conscious China why a tight bond with Russia may not be in its best interests.

“We should remind the Chinese that with friends like these, who needs enemies?” says Ambassador Daalder. Citing Mr. Putin’s use of nuclear blackmail or Russia’s mounting war crimes and human rights violations “can encourage them to think about how they may be linking themselves to behavior they ultimately don’t want to be associated with,” Ambassador Daalder says.

Nevertheless, Mr. Coffey at Hudson says Washington has to remember that in some ways China is benefiting from Russia’s weaknesses in the wake of its disastrous foray into Ukraine – for example, by the access Beijing has had to discount-priced Russian energy.

Yet, beyond all that, it might be enough just for Washington to point out how recent events suggest a prolonged period of instability in Russia, Ambassador Daalder says.

“I think we should say that on top of everything else, Russia is unstable to boot,” he says. “And that’s the one thing the Chinese worry about most.”