The war in Ukraine is challenging the military’s established role in Russian domestic affairs, politicizing the armed forces, and reducing their privileged autonomy in waging war and developing the defense sector.
Russian civil-military relations are in crisis. Last month, the Wagner mercenary army rose up against the regime—and went unpunished for doing so, despite apparently having killed several Russian pilots. Less than a month later, in mid-July, General Ivan Popov—one of the commanders of the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia—recorded a voice message accusing Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov of suspending him from command for reporting problems in the army. Several other Russian generals suspected of disloyalty have reportedly been dismissed or placed on leave.
Despite his image as a strongman that the military could rely on, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been slow to address the root causes of the civil-military conflict, prompting claims that it all boils down to the president’s preference for loyalty over competence. The reality is more complex. The war is challenging the military’s established role in Russian domestic affairs, politicizing the armed forces, and reducing their privileged autonomy in waging war and developing the defense sector. There are no good options for resolving this conflict.
The military has always played a pivotal role in Russian history. In the failed coup of 1991, the army dragged its feet on supporting the putschists, while in the presidential assault on parliament in 1993, tank detachments set the Russian parliament on fire. Boots on the ground have shored up Russian influence in Central Asia, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Syria.
At home, the military has largely stayed out of politics in recent years, but enjoyed relatively large autonomy. Putin let the military do its job on the battlefield as it saw fit, and delegated defense reform to the generals, except for a brief period in 2007–2012, when Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov imposed institutional changes that greatly improved Russian military capabilities later displayed in Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and Syria.
Moreover, during Putin’s presidency, Moscow has narrowed the cultural gap with society through the militarization of the Russian people, elevating the status of World War II, and maintaining conscription. Instead of making the military more progressive, the Kremlin opted to nudge society toward social conservatism, militarism, and statism. Although criticism of the armed forces only became illegal during the full-scale invasion, Moscow had been sanctifying the status of the Russian armed forces for years before that.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine put these long-standing principles to the test. The FSB (the main domestic security agency) interfered in the original invasion plan, detaching it from the Russian military doctrine and violating the principle of military autonomy in war planning. Following the military’s slowness to adapt, the Kremlin intensified its interference in the military chain of command, with Putin personally approving some operations and making personnel changes.
To make matters worse, public criticism by military bloggers and Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin politicized military activities. Before the war, the Defense Ministry had dominated the information space. Now, direct and blunt accusations against Gerasimov and Shoigu left the military without Putin’s political protection, in contrast to the Second Chechen War, when he personally emphasized his responsibility for the war effort and the military’s actions.
Just a few years ago, the Russian military had debated the need to lean on the state-owned “patriotic” defense industry, which, unlike “civilian businessmen,” was supposed to be reliable in times of war. Last year, the tables turned when private companies and civil society initiatives had to step up to plug the gaps in first aid and equipment supplies. Some of these private actors even questioned the “patriotism” of the Russian military leadership, as well as the organizational adaptability, flexibility, and adequacy of the military to Russia’s contemporary security needs.
Despite his personal interference in the military chain of command, the Russian president was reluctant to announce a popular mobilization in the early summer of last year, leaving Russia’s severely damaged military to defend large swaths of occupied Ukrainian territory. This led to defeat in the battles of Kharkiv and Kherson late last year. As commander in chief, Putin was reluctant to protect the civil-military relations he had shaped before or to use his personal political capital to intervene in the ordeal that he had created.
The military defeats have not brought immediate political problems for the Kremlin, but they have provoked grumbling within the ranks and from Prigozhin that has undermined the foundation of the professional military: unity of command. The Ministry of Defense’s worst nightmare is losing control of its troops. Accordingly, it has always focused on ensuring strict vertical loyalty and compliance among its officer corps, with negative consequences such as window dressing, biased reporting, and corruption.
To outsiders, it may seem that the defense ministry’s failures are driven by a reliance on loyalty rather than competence, but the Russian military is convinced that the absence of loyalty is the “killer criterion” that could undermine the military as an organized force and thereby jeopardize Russia’s national interests.
If disagreements among the officer corps during the war could be managed by the defense ministry, Prigozhin’s recent uprising was a systemic blow that sent the military’s fear of losing control over the troops skyrocketing. The Wagner private military company is a dangerous mix of an irregular, agile mercenary force and a nascent movement with a political ideology and branding.
Wagner’s “officer corps” is filled with former Russian military officers combining combat and political experience. Four retired military officers played crucial roles in the founding of the group: Dmitry “Wagner” Utkin, a former GRU (foreign military intelligence) serviceman with far-right views; Alexander “Ratibor” Kuznetsov, who served as a special forces major, but then spent five years in prison for kidnapping and theft; Andrei “Brodyaga” Bogatov, who was a candidate for the ultra-nationalist Rodina party and served in the paratroopers; and Andrei “Sedoi” Trochev, a retired colonel and an active member of the military veterans’ movement.
The Kremlin allowed these men to recruit thousands of prison inmates whose loyalty to the Russian political leadership is hardly trustworthy. Now that human capital has acquired the political capital of a patriotic, genuinely “pro-Russian” group, as opposed to the unpatriotic “crooks and thieves” in the top elite—including the military leadership.
Whether or not the rumors of Wagner supporters within the Russian military are true, the search for and purge of anyone associated with disloyalty were to be expected. In any case, the recent removal of General Popov from the 58th Army Command would have happened even in peacetime. Popov reportedly tried to lobby for his troops’ rotation and the delivery of counter-battery radars, but unsuccessfully. Then he chose to override the decisions of his immediate superior, Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov, by threatening to go directly to the president. There is no legal mechanism or informal tradition that would allow a flag officer to do this.
The fact that the deputy chairman of the Duma’s Defense Committee, Andrei Gurulev (also a retired general), published Popov’s voice message undoubtedly worsened the latter’s fate. Regardless of his reported deployment to Syria, any further position for General Popov will likely be his last. He deliberately threatened to break the chain of command and politicized the orders of superiors with the help of a Duma deputy, whether intentional or not.
What is happening, therefore, is far more than a choice between loyalty and competence. To win the war, Moscow needs both, which is a tough challenge. Otherwise, more actors in the battlefield will be emboldened to blame Shoigu and Gerasimov for any mishaps (real or fabricated), thereby further degrading the established principles of civil-military relations. That will in turn undermine political stability in Russia, as more politicians like Gurulev will exploit military problems for their own benefit. Unless President Putin steps in and resolves the conflict—both in Ukraine and at home—Russia’s damaged civil-military relations will only get worse.
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