Russia’s Uprising Is a Serious Threat to China as Well By Hal Brands Bloomberg Opinion June 24, 2023

 Russia’s Uprising Is a Serious Threat to China as Well

By Hal Brands

Bloomberg Opinion

June 24, 2023

When political change comes to totalitarian societies, it tends to be violent and unpredictable. Few analysts — even well-informed US officials I spoke to in recent days — were forecasting that Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner Group of mercenaries, would soon be leading his forces toward Moscow.

We don’t know whether we are seeing the downfall of Russian President Vladimir Putin. But even at this early stage, there are four key barometers worth watching closely, not the least of which is how these events could make life very tricky for China.

First, Russia’s upheaval creates a clearer path forward for Ukraine. Just days ago, US officials were fairly grim about the prospects of a Ukrainian offensive that was yielding high casualties and modest results. Now, a Russian army that is fragmenting violently will be hard pressed to withstand a sharp Ukrainian assault.

Kyiv hasn’t yet committed the majority of the combat power it has developed for this offensive. Expect it to do so fairly quickly to exploit the chaos in the enemy’s ranks. What once seemed like an outside possibility — the breakdown of the Russian military in the field, which leads to outsized gains by Ukraine — has become more likely.

Second, it’s not clear that Prigozhin’s revolt is a road to a better Russia. From the start of this war, the most serious threat to Putin’s regime has come not from Russia’s democratically inclined liberals, an endangered species, but from a nationalist right that can sometimes seem just as scary and authoritarian as Putin himself.

We are now seeing a contest for power between Putin and a man who made a name for himself by doing Russia’s dirty work — destabilizing countries in Africa, intervening in a US presidential election, and providing the shock troops for Moscow’s assault in Eastern Ukraine. Regardless of who prevails, it is hard to see a more politically open, geopolitically moderate Russia emerging anytime soon.

Third, what we could see instead is greater instability in large parts of the former Soviet Union. This revolt could have existential implications for Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko, who has increasingly become Putin’s puppet. The Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov has pledged to take on

Wagner’s rebels. Chaos in Russia could also intensify simmering conflicts among former Soviet republics — between Armenia and Azerbaijan, for instance — in which Putin has long positioned

himself as arbiter.

Finally, Russia’s unrest creates intense strategic headaches for China. The war in Ukraine has brought certain benefits for Beijing — a distracted America chief among them. But Putin’s invasion has also led democratic countries around the world, in Asia as well as Europe, to hasten preparations to defend themselves from autocratic aggression. Now it has made very tangible the prospect that military failure in Ukraine could create political upheaval in Moscow.

President Xi Jinping needs a friendly, relatively strong Russia that can challenge American power in Europe while Beijing pushes its influence in Asia. He stands to lose a great deal from a Russia that falls into civil war, or one that is humiliated in Ukraine and convulsed by civil strife. The current unrest also raises the threat of conflict between ex-Soviet states in China’s backyard, such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The partnership between Moscow and Beijing won’t collapse overnight: Another Russian dictator would still need the strategic partnership with China. But not every Russian nationalist will get along as famously with Xi as Putin has — the two leaders have reportedly stayed up late at night discussing their autocratic ambitions — and not every Russian nationalist will be as willing to mortgage Russia’s sovereignty to China as the price of prosecuting the war in Ukraine.

If anything, then, the current unrest underscores what a massive own-goal the war in Ukraine has been — not just for Moscow, but for the larger autocratic entente of which it is a part. In February 2022, Russia’s military looked menacing; the Sino-Russian partnership seemed solid, purposeful and ascendant. The US-led international order was being challenged on two fronts simultaneously.

Now, Putin is in danger of having to fight a war at home to deal with the consequences of his war of aggression abroad. And Xi is coming face to face with the possibility that the man he called his “best, most intimate friend” may be far weaker and less competent than he seemed. That’s at least one just outcome of a very unjust war.

Hal Brands 

Senior Fellow

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China | Russia | Russia-Ukraine