---
title: "Prigozhin against Putin | Pekka Toveri | Negotiator 199"
summary: "MP and former head of Finnish military intelligence Pekka Toveri reviews Wagner's midsummer mutiny a week after the events. The operation was, he says, competently planned — heavy transporters in place, logistics arranged, Rostov secured the rear — until Prigozhin lost his nerve. The best structural explanation concerns why Prigozhin was allowed to rage at all: in the good tsar, bad boyars model he served as a lightning rod, so the accusations never reached Putin. The mutiny exposed four things: the rear is empty, nobody defended, information does not move inside the administration, and a dictator does not get accurate information. Toveri dismisses the staged-coup theory with two arguments. It closes on the counteroffensive: a Russian defence 20 to 30 kilometres deep whose first line has not yet been broken. Published 29 June 2023."
datePublished: 2023-06-29
dateModified: 2023-06-29
originalLang: en
section: society
sections: ["society"]
authors: ["Sami Miettinen"]
tags: ["Neuvottelija","EP199","Pekka Toveri","Yevgeny Prigozhin","Vladimir Putin","Wagner","Russia","Ukraine","Military intelligence","Counteroffensive","NATO","Security policy"]
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep199-prigozin-vs-putin-pekka-toveri/
---
# Prigozhin against Putin | Pekka Toveri | Negotiator 199

# Prigozhin against Putin | Pekka Toveri

> **Summary:**
> In episode 199 Sami Miettinen interviews **Pekka Toveri** — MP, former major general and
> head of Finnish military intelligence — about the Wagner mutiny over midsummer and its
> consequences. Recorded a week after the events, and the channel's first episode as a NATO
> member. Published 29 June 2023.

---

## What happened at midsummer

Toveri's characterisation sets the tone: "a typical Russian operation, an attempted mutiny".
The sequence: after the capture of **Bakhmut**, the bulk of Wagner's forces had been pulled
out of the line for resupply and reorganisation. With those forces they marched from Ukraine
across the Russian border — **the FSB's border troops did nothing** to stop them. They went to
**Rostov**, where the Southern Military District headquarters directing the war against
Ukraine sits, and took it. From there a smaller part, around 5,000 troops, continued north;
**Voronezh** was taken on the way, and the march continued "without anyone seriously stopping
it", until the deal was announced and they turned back.

Toveri's assessment of the operation's quality is what makes this interesting: **it was
competently planned.** American sources said it had been prepared for some time — the heavy
transporters were in place, logistics were arranged, and taking Rostov secured the rear so
that moving troops quickly from the Ukrainian front towards Moscow would have been difficult.
"But then Prigozhin lost his nerve halfway through."

## The losses were real

Prigozhin claimed no Russian blood was spilled. Toveri lists otherwise: around twenty aircrew
died, and exceptionally valuable equipment was lost — **two Mi-8 electronic warfare variants**,
of which Russia has perhaps twenty and has already lost six in the war, and **Il-20 command
post aircraft**, of which there are perhaps half a dozen in total. As Miettinen puts it, nobody
can fake that. These are capabilities Russia has few of.

## Why Prigozhin was allowed to shout

The episode's best structural explanation concerns why Prigozhin could publicly rage about
ammunition shortages and insult the defence minister at all. Toveri's answer is the **good
tsar, bad boyars** model: the tsar is good and wants fine things, but the boyars beneath him
ruin it. Playing the cliques off against each other ensures no power centre forms that could
turn on Putin — they spend their energy fighting each other. Putin sits above the fight and
becomes the referee when needed.

And there is a second function, the episode's sharpest single observation: **Prigozhin served
as a lightning rod.** When the war goes badly and people are angry, he is allowed to attack
the military leadership — the accusations do not reach Putin, and Putin applauds him for doing
the dirty work.

Miettinen's addition: the capture of Bakhmut personalised to Prigozhin, while the inability to
advance personalised to **Shoigu** and the army. When Shoigu then demanded Wagner be folded
into the army, it was simply, on Toveri's reading, that a line had been crossed — and the best
way to take a man's power is to take away his armed force.

## Lukashenko's deal, and on whose terms

Miettinen notes that Putin's speech named neither Prigozhin nor Shoigu, and appealed to history
— the 1917 civil war and the Russo-Japanese war. Toveri's explanation is direct: **Putin has no
future to offer his people, so it is better to talk about the past.**

**Lukashenko's** motive is, in Toveri's reading, self-interested and logical: if Putin falls,
Lukashenko falls after him, because his power rests on Putin. He simultaneously raises his own
profile and earns a debt of gratitude.

The deal had two tiers, and that is its problem. For Prigozhin: financial wellbeing and position
secured, no prosecution, permission to continue operations in Africa and Syria. For Wagner's
men: you may join the defence ministry's forces. Toveri says this has caused bitterness, and a
video came out of the Wagner ranks — "what the hell, we set off to take Moscow and this is the
result".

Miettinen's summary of what Putin's word is worth is the episode's most quotable line: relying
on it is **"quite a leap into the void without any kind of parachute"** — he is not known for
keeping promises, except the promise that he will come and kill you. Toveri agrees that Shoigu
and Gerasimov are not about to change jobs quickly, and that rather than immunity the likelier
outcome is that no trial is sought at all. He also does not expect Prigozhin to stay long in
Belarus, because Russia's security and intelligence services operate there freely.

## What the mutiny revealed about Russia

This section carries furthest.

**First: the rear is empty.** The bulk of Russia's operational ground forces are tied up in
Ukraine, and Prigozhin knew it. Toveri's dry observation: "a traffic policeman is poorly placed
to stop a tank." Russia has not been able to protect even its border areas from raids by Russian
volunteer fighters.

**Second: nobody defended.** For Toveri the most striking thing was not Prigozhin's popularity
but that **dozens of officials, governors and generals did not appear in the media to affirm
their loyalty** — everyone watched to see what would happen. In Rostov the public supported him,
but Toveri's reading is that this is not about love for him: it is that Putin is not liked, and
here was someone who dared trip up the dictatorship.

**Third: information does not move.** In the Russian administration the service branches do not
talk to each other, nor do the levels of army command, nor the ministries. There is no culture of
cooperation, because information is power and is kept. Which is why even the news that a column
was crossing the border did not reach the right people.

**Fourth: the dictator's information problem.** A leader long in power and surrounded by yes-men
does not get accurate information, because things can go badly for the messenger. Toveri adds a
further turn: now that there is some unrest, information may also be withheld deliberately,
because there may be advantage in it.

## A staged coup? Toveri dismisses it

Miettinen raises the conspiracy theory that this was a Putin–Prigozhin play to flush out
traitors, with Erdogan's Turkey in 2016 as the comparison — which Miettinen himself considers a
genuine coup attempt, after which the armed forces, education system and administration were
purged.

Toveri's answer has two parts and is convincing. **First, the motive is missing:** Putin lost
face here and looks like a weak leader, and now has to take measures to shore up his position.
**Second, the means point the other way:** Putin has tens of thousands of operatives in the FSB
and entirely unrestricted ability to tap phones, read email and use facial recognition to see who
meets whom. "Is there really no other way to expose traitors than to stage a play like this?"

And he adds an argument that generalises: if Putin were a cunning long-game schemer, **why has
the war in Ukraine been sixteen months of one blunder after another?** "You have a leaking boat
that keeps taking on new holes."

## What Ukraine gained

Less than one would hope. Toveri's assessment is that at best the mutiny would have pulled forces
off the front and offered an opening — but because information did not move, units simply carried
on with their assigned tasks. **The front is in practice where it was.** One likely lasting effect
is that Wagner's men — backed by a billion, better paid and better supplied — will not be keen to
return to the trenches under the defence ministry. Toveri's observation about mercenary firms is
bluntly balanced: discipline is merciless and people are executed without trial, but equipment,
logistics and treatment are better than in the armed forces, which is why recruitment works better
too.

## The state of the counteroffensive

The closing half is a military assessment, and is best read as a forecast rather than a verdict.

**The destruction of the Kakhovka dam** shifted the centre of gravity east. Ukrainian forces had
previously operated across the river with light infantry; the dam's destruction blocked attacks for
a time, and although the flow has settled, a larger operation would require substantial pontoon and
ferrying equipment that Ukraine may not have in sufficient quantity.

**The Russian defences between Zaporizhzhia and Mariupol** get the episode's most thorough
description: at worst a position **20 to 30 kilometres deep**. Forward reception positions and
company strongpoints two or three kilometres back, extensive obstacles and minefields; then the
first defensive line with anti-tank obstacles, ditches and trenches; behind it an intermediate zone
with reserves, artillery and command posts; then a second, equivalent defensive position; and
behind that, in depth, reconnaissance areas and command centres. **Ukraine has not, on Toveri's
understanding, yet broken through even the first line.**

**On equipment:** Leopards have been seen; Challengers are in country at one or two companies,
20–30 vehicles in a single brigade; Abrams are not yet in country and delivery was promised to be
accelerated into the summer. Bradleys are plentiful. Britain's **Storm Shadow** is, in Toveri's
view, more significant than HIMARS because range and warhead are larger; it is used against
operationally significant targets — bridges, command posts, logistics hubs — and in one video a
**Pantsir system fired at it twice and missed both times**.

**On reserves:** Toveri estimates around a dozen mechanised brigades, some with Western equipment,
plus ten or so national guard brigades — a force of around twenty brigades, of which far from all
have been committed. Meanwhile partisan and precision strikes continue against Russian logistics
and command systems, probing for weak points. As he puts it: **the main attack has not begun.**

Miettinen offers an alternative — abandon the Zaporizhzhia breakthrough and push on the Donetsk
eastern front below Bakhmut to the Russian border. Toveri points out that September's **Kharkiv**
success came against a substantially thinner and less fortified defence; the comparison does not
hold.

## Liberated villages and the timescale

The liberated area is around 7 per cent against the 11 per cent Russia took after 2022. Toveri sets
the scale honestly: a dozen or so villages and a few hundred square kilometres, against tens of
thousands still to be liberated — **at this rate it is a long project.** The symbolic value is real
all the same: in Donbas, areas lost nearly a decade ago have been retaken.

## An MP's first weeks

The episode closes personally. Toveri thanks his voters and says politics has so far felt more
positive than he expected — though he suspects the realities will show in the autumn. He has been
placed on the **defence committee**, which he considers fortunate, because there he can work on
things he knows well.

His reason for entering politics is direct: Russia is a long-term threat and there is an unstable
nuclear state next door, so readiness must not be allowed to fall in either internal or external
security.

**And the episode's last thought is the one he raises as most important.** At the defence
committee's inaugural meeting everyone stressed that things are done together for the country and
that party politics has not intruded. If common defence were turned into a party-political question
and unity were lost, that would, Toveri says, be a very bad thing — and unity is **an important
signal outwards**.

## A note on the source

There are no gaps in the transcription, but **this episode's automatic transcription is clearly the
weakest in the batch**: Russian and Ukrainian names and military terminology are badly mangled. The
cleaned cue file corrects the names against the publisher's own chapter list — Prigozhin, Shoigu,
Gerasimov, Bakhmut, Lukashenko, Voronezh, Rostov — and the identifiable terms (Kakhovka dam,
Zaporizhzhia, Mariupol, Donbas, Kharkiv, FSB, Storm Shadow, HIMARS, Pantsir, Stryker, Bradley,
Abrams, Il-20, Mi-8).

**Numeric values were not corrected**, because an imprecision of speech cannot be distinguished
from a transcription error. At least one figure in the episode is clearly wrong (Storm Shadow's
range), and this article does not repeat the episode's numbers except where they are internally
consistent. Individual unclear expressions were likewise not guessed at.

The episode was transcribed with MacWhisper and the transcript carries no speaker labels; with a
single guest the speakers are reliably distinguishable.

## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel:
[Prigozin vs Vladmir Putin | Pekka Toveri | Neuvottelija 199](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk1HkdwpHoo).