The Russian Revolution Will Be Televised
Watching Wagner PMC's march on Moscow via Google Maps
Well, that escalated quickly. I’m traveling in the UK and as I was getting ready for bed last night I was reading an article about Yevgeny Prigozhin — the head of Russia’s private mercenary army, Wagner PMC — saying that the stated reasons for the Russian invasion of Ukraine were lies, the blame for which he laid at the feet of Russia’s minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu.
Prigozhin has been criticizing Shoigu’s corruption and general conduct of the war for quite some time, so I initially chalked this up as more of the same. But shortly afterwards, Prigozhin’s rhetoric radically escalated when he made a vague threat to take his 25,000 men and remove Shoigu himself.
At this point, I began considering the possibility of an actual coup attempt by Prigozhin, albeit targeted at Shoigu rather than towards Putin per se. It’s an archetypical form of coup d'état going back to the Middle Ages, in which jockeying between royal courtiers takes the form of a contest over controls access to the king. Frustrated by its failures at court, a rebel faction coalesces, swears loyalty to the king, and announces that it merely seeks to remove the insidious courtiers who are whispering poison into the king’s ears. Once they are removed, the king will surely realize who his true servants are and restore them to power.
But then, within an hour or two, reports that Wagner personnel had crossed back from Ukraine into Russia began percolating up on Twitter. They were headed for Rostov-on-Don, the regional military headquarters, and which they occupied in short order while the military leadership fled. The coup was on!
At about midnight London time, the word was that Wagner was heading up the road towards Voronezh on its way to Moscow. There were unconfirmed reports of clashes on the highway north. So I did what any modern traveler is used to doing and checked the live traffic view on Google Maps. Lo and behold:
Someone had marked official road closures all along the highway north of Rostov. I don’t know precisely how the Google Maps traffic system works in Russia, but these would appear to be road closures reported by ordinary drivers who encounter roadblocks, are turned away, and notify the system. It’s exactly what you’d expect would happen if a long military convoy was on the move and blocking highway entrances to prevent congestion.
The idea that one could watch the progression of a possible military coup live via Google Maps, and with a greater potential degree of specificity than even the word-of-mouth on Twitter (let alone the balefully out of date official news reporting) astonished me so much that I didn’t quite grasp the significance of what I was seeing at the time.
I then went to bed, waking to see reports that the Wagner convoy had taken Voronezh, the next major city along that highway and roughly halfway to Moscow itself. It’s an eight hour or so drive between Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh, meaning that the convoy must have faced relatively minimal resistance on the way to Voronezh.
Folks on Twitter assumed that meant Wagner would head next towards Moscow. A quick check of Google Maps and, sure enough, road closures along the stretch of highway just north of Voronezh.
Again, it was remarkable that user-derived information about road closures was yielding information about the progress of Prigozhin’s coup that was more specific and up to date than what I was getting on Twitter, even from any of the Russian expatriate accounts that have been an invaluable resource in understanding the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The convoy is *there*, right *there*!
Then, while I was showering, Putin gave a speech declaring Prigozhin/Wagner traitors, which instantly changed the tenor of the coup from “remove the corrupt courtiers surrounding the President” to “remove the President himself.” There is no backing down for Prigozhin now; it’s take Moscow or lose his head. Everything hinges on Moscow in the Russian political economy; control Moscow, and it doesn’t matter how many cities the size of Rostov or Voronezh are under rebel control.
But here’s the kicker, the latest map of road closures [as of 10am London time] on the highway approach to Moscow:
That places the Wagner convoy just about an hour and a half from the outskirts of Moscow. At this pace, Moscow could fall to Wagner forces by the time the East Coast of the US is waking up for breakfast. Or it could finally be stopped by forces loyal to Putin, leading to a longer standoff or siege.
Either way, in a matter of half a day, the situation has escalated from mere rhetorical sour grapes between Prigozhin and Shoigu to what is already likely to be the most important development in the Russia-Ukraine War since the failed assault on Kiev last year. And there is a small but still growing chance that it could be the most significant geopolitical event since Boris Yeltsin stood on a tank in Moscow in 1991.
And we could watch it all unfold on Google Maps!
Yeah you really are a big, big thinker.