I am not an expert on Russia or geopolitics or military operations.
But.
Here’s a list of a few recent power vacuums and how each turned out:
Afghanistan: The Taliban returned to nationwide power.
Somalia: The country fell into full-on anarchy.
Iraq: ISIS happened.
Libya: More ISIS.
Kosovo: A whole lot of war crimes.
The Suez Crisis: A whole lot of nuclear crises and the fomenting of Middle Eastern distrust of the United States.
Eastern Europe Post-WWII: The Iron Curtain went up.
U.S.S.R. Post-Lenin’s Death: There was a purge, Stalin came to power.
The French Revolution/Napoleonic France: Many executions by guillotine.
Not great stuff, not a great sign if Putin were to be deposed. You want him out of there, of course, but you don’t want what probably comes next. You want to magically thread the needle and somehow end up with a democratic Russia, but even a few years of that could just be another power vacuum if the democracy isn’t durable. The last power vacuum in Russia? That got us Putin.
Still, Putin is looking weaker than he looked a week ago, and Wagner appears less willing to fight in Ukraine than it did a week ago, and those are both good outcomes in isolation. So, one optimistic take—and again, this is based off a ton of guesswork—is that the Wagner uprising weakening Russia without overthrowing Putin was among the best possible outcomes of the last few days. It’s better than nothing.
