Alea Ecta Est
When I was a college freshman, one of my classmates Tony and I would study for exams together. Denison University left the classroom buildings open all night; they were quiet and air conditioned. It was better than our residence, Crawford Hall. It was constantly vibrating with music, the sheer volume fueled by cheap beer and “Ohio Green” marijuana . And, no air conditioning back then.
So we could go to a classroom, smoke cigars, and focus on the political science or history exam coming up. The cigar smoke guaranteed we’d have the room to ourselves as we focused on nuclear deterrent theory or Revolution in the 20th century. (Smoking in the building was ‘OK’ back in 1975). About three in the morning, our brains were packed: ready to spew out volumes of knowledge in the thin blue books for our written exams. When we were done, we walked home through the darkness to Crawford.
No more cramming needed. And as we passed the Chapel, we “performed” our exam ritual. We balanced on the sundial just below the Chapel, overlooking a blacked out Granville, and chanted Caesar’s words as he crossed the Rubicon and invaded Rome itself: “Alea ecta est – the die is cast”. There was no turning back, no early morning cramming. We were ready, committed, prepared. Then we threw coins into the darkness above Granville, our commitment and our “sacrifice” to the exam “Gods”.
It worked – we both had excellent grades. And when we our paths diverged, I continued the tradition, at least the “Alea ecta est” part, into graduate school and life. It marked the time when there was no “turning back”, just a decision made moving on into the future. I crossed a lot of personal Rubicon’s.
No Response
The “Wagner Group” is an ugly part of Russian foreign policy. I first heard of them in 2018, when a “Russian” force of thousands of soldiers attacked a small group of American Special Forces protecting a gas plant in Eastern Syria. There was a four-hour pitched battle. US Air power turned the tide in favor of the Special Forces. The outcome: hundreds of Russian forces killed and zero American casualties (NYT). Afterwards, I kept waiting for a Russian response. After all, with hundreds of Russians killed by force of US arms, there had to be a reaction, a response, to that loss.
Wagner Group
But there really wasn’t. It turned out that the Russians were “mercenaries”, part of a private “army” hired and commanded by one of Vladimir Putin’s allies in the Russian oligarchy, Yevgeny Prigozhin. He was a part of the St. Petersburg “cabal” that brought Putin to power in the first place, and gained billions of rubles through his Kremlin connections. In return, he built a private army, the Wagner Group, to do the international “dirty work” Putin needed to further his foreign policy.
They were “mercs” in a “private army”. But more importantly they could be sacrificed on far away battlefields and few in the motherland would miss them: ex-soldiers and convicts. It was kind of like the French Foreign Legion, without their training or the control of the French Government. Prigozhin’s Wagner Group was his own. And if hundreds died in the Syrian desert, no one cared.
The Wagner Group relies on utter brutality. Video evidence exists of their disgusting tortures throughout the world. They show bound men with their hands and feet smashed with sledge hammers, or their genitals cut off with box cutters. And that’s exactly the reputation Prigozhin wanted for his “army”. The Wagner Group gives no mercy; they simply charge ahead, die, or kill.
Ukraine
A year and a half ago, Putin’s ill-fated invasion of Ukraine fell apart quickly. The “first strike”; a seventeen mile column of tanks, was left stalled and vulnerable on the road to Kyiv. The Russian Army was unprepared for the powerful Ukrainian response. And as the regular army casualties mounted and the momentum stalled, Putin called on his friend to send in the Wagner Group. A commitment of that size required Wagner to “scale-up”. Prigozhin sent recruiters to the Russian prisons with an offer: if you can survive six months of battle, you can have your freedom. What the prisoners probably didn’t know is that survival was a fifty-fifty proposition, at best.
Most of the recent battles in Ukraine, particularly the months long struggle around the city of Bahkmut, were fought by the Wagner Group. Prigozhin seemed to struggle with the regular Russian Army, demanding supply and support that wasn’t coming. He became more and more public in his dissent, surprising in the usually iron-gripped Putin world. Prigozhin literally called out by name the Russian Commanding General, Gerasimov, and the Defense Minister, General Shoigu.
Die is Cast
According to Prigozhin, Gerasimov and Shoigu launched an air strike in Ukraine, aimed at his own Wagner Group troops. So, he turned his troops around, leaving Ukraine and marching to the Southern Headquarters of the Russian army in the city of Rostov on the Don River. Once he “crossed the Don”, he literally “crossed the Rubicon” of old: he was in open rebellion to the Russian government, and to his “friend”, Vladimir Putin. And then he headed north, sending troops to threaten Moscow.
“The die is cast”. Putin called Prigozhin out as a traitor. But the real surprise was that there was no resistance to the Wagner forces as they roared up the M-4 highway towards the capital. To all the world, it looked as if the Wagner Group would drive straight into Moscow, and Prigozhin would stride into the Kremlin to demand his former friend act. Finally, Russian forces were concentrated in Moscow, and a pitched battle seemed only hours away. But then, surprisingly, the Wagner convoy stopped, within 120 miles of Moscow.
“A deal” was cut, negotiated by Belarus President Lukashenko. The Wagner Group forces would return to their bases in Ukraine. Prigozhin would go into “exile” in Belarus. Wagner troops were “pardoned” and put under the control of the Russian army. Perhaps, though we’re not sure, Gerasimov and/or Sochi may be “out”.
Deal with the Devil
It’s hard to imagine how such a deal will hold. Putin is a dictator, holding onto power through military strength. Prigozhin demonstrated Putin’s actual weakness, especially with the failure of Russian forces in Ukraine. Putin’s natural response would be revenge. How many “enemies” of Russia fall out of windows, or mysteriously die of nuclear poison, or are shot from cars in a “random attack”? How can Putin allow this most overt rebellion to go without response?
Prigozhin crossed his “Rubicon”. There is no turning back. He has signed his own death warrant with Putin. Is it possible that this rebellion was a spur-of-the-moment reaction? Or did the Wagner Forces expect other regular Army groups to join in the rebellion? We don’t know the answer to those questions. What we do know is that Prigozhin demonstrated the weakness of Vladimir Putin to the world, something that Putin cannot tolerate. And we also know that these actions will make the Russian forces standing against Ukraine even weaker.
“The die is cast”. We just don’t know what they say – yet.
