 Hello everyone, welcome to another capsule International Relations capsule for the Shankar IAS Academy. The topic we are chosen for today is Putin versus Wagner. We have all been following the events relating to the Russia-Ukraine war and we knew that it is going through a very critical time for President Putin. He has not won the war that he had expected, there has been assistance and so the things were going in a direction which was not very favorable to him but now surprise of surprises we hear that he also has challenges within his country. This was expected, many people thought that when a leader loses a battle then his own supporters might turn against him. This is a normal thing that happens in the world. So, but this has come up from very unexpected quarters. The rebellion has come from one of his closest associates, Mr. Yavgeny Prigoshan who was very close to Mr. Putin personally even though officially he was supposed to be an informal group, the group that is called Wagner with Mr. Yavgeny Prigoshan as the leader has been working in the country and outside for a long time. People knew about its existence, people also knew that he had the support of President Putin and like many other governments he used this as what is called the dirty tricks department that is things which cannot be done by the government or at least government cannot accept that he has done, could be denied. If the government does something which has to be denied, which is deniable are normally given to some kind of agency like this. This is common in many governments, I don't know how many but most governments have this kind of a dirty tricks department and Mr. Prigoshan was the leader of this group Wagner which has been operating for several years. It started as a small group and now he claims there are more than 30,000, some believe it is 50,000 because there is no record of what he does and what they do, where they go, but they seem to be going all over the place basically to protect the interests of Russia and that may mean killing some people, rewarding some others, taking them into custody or looking after them, all this is part of the game and that is very well known. It's a little more than spying not just gathering information but also acting on that information that they have and this has been going on people knew but of course a few days ago Mr. Putin was asked he would say there is no such thing but all of a sudden on 24th of July there was an insurrection by this group. People knew that this was coming because as the Russian army failed in several of their enterprises, the Wagner group started criticizing the army and saying that they were not doing the right things. So there was some kind of rivalry developing between the two and Mr. Putin may have closed his eyes to it because this will take its own position and that they will somehow come to a conclusion etc. But unexpectedly it went beyond his control. Suddenly this group occupied a little town and declared that they have not only taken this town, they were now marching to Moscow. Why they were marching to Moscow was not very clear but there was some hint that there might be a change of presidency in Moscow which is a very serious thing for Putin. So it appeared that they were marching towards Moscow and if that march went on naturally there will be a war, there will be a fight between the Russian army and the Wagner army, both our friends, relatives, collaborators etc. So this is something that Putin put note of afforded. So he came out very openly and very strongly against Wagner and said that if it moves to Moscow there will be eliminated and the leaders would be punished. That was his first reaction, very strong reaction which everybody expected. But within a day that is by 26th morning there was another development, another declaration by Mr. Putin that this mutiny has ended and this was under the good offices of the president of Belarus who is a great friend of Mr. Putin. He has been supporting him in many ways and so slowly the terms of the understanding were revealed that Mr. Regulsion and his group will move to Belarus so that they are protected from the Russian army because Russian army was very angry and if they stayed in Russia maybe there will be conflicts and so the first announcement came that they are all moving to Belarus and they will either settle there or slowly they will come back. No action will be taken against the leaders. So that was the crucial point and we do not know what actually happened after that. In any case the mutiny or the revolt ended and the army went through the Wagner army or mercenaries if you want to call them because they are paid for their job, they don't have any idea or ideology. So this has happened in other countries, nothing very new but the surprising part was the fierceness of the move by Wagner and also the equal force with which Putin sought to meet it and then both of them decided very quickly that in this situation of this war in Ukraine such a development would be devastating for Russia and I think that is what finally deserted that we should have a compromise and in fact the NATO and United States must have been very happy with that this happened and they were probably preparing their moves on the presumption that there might be a change in Kremlin because Mr. Jovini precaution is known to be very strong, ruthless, he kills people, does whatever he wants. So it would not have been beyond him to go against Mr. Putin but both of them realized that this was not going to be the interests of the country, not certainly the interests of the world and therefore a solution was found. But what this solution means and how it will be implemented, in fact it also says those in the Wagner group can either continue to be in the group and remain in Belarus and then they can act from there, others who do not want to be a mercenary they can come and join the Russian army, become regular soldiers or still others who do not want to do anything can go home. This is a very liberal and generous settlement of the crisis but some people still report that Mr. Prigolshin is still in Russia and that he has not gone to Belarus, we don't know. But anyway this has been now concluded, the threat to Mr. Putin is not there and so he can go ahead and prepare to fight the NATO and Ukraine. But it is not as simple as that because you know what Mr. Putin was aiming at, he was aiming at going beyond the Soviet revolution. He was not fancied, was not fancied about the Soviet revolution or actions of his predecessors, he condemned all of them that they destroyed the Tsarist Empire, the Russian Empire was ruined by them and communism has destroyed Russia, these were his ideas and for a man who has such ambitious agenda to be scared, to be shivering at this prospect of a few of his own people attacking him and will not do him any good because his image as a heroic leader and the controller of very many things and also willing to wanting to win the war, this was certainly a matter of his image being dented. But this was a man who was once, Prigolshin was a man who was once called a hero of the Russian Federation and on the other hand he was once in jail. So all these activities of his and now as a private military company on a delicate mission and his being challenged by such a group is obviously quite damaging to the reputation of Mr. Putin. So whatever may be the solution, it certainly not added to the strength and the capacity of Mr. Putin. So now we know more about Wagner Group and they were basically recruiting prisoners because prisoners who have been punished for very cruel crimes were the ones they particularly selected because they don't have any fear about blood or bloodshed or anything like that. So they were basically recruited among the prisoners. They were allowed to go into the prison and recruit the more ruthless ones and so this is a real setback and because there was a real rivalry and perhaps what Mr. Prigolshin wanted to be was the Russian Defense Minister and this may not have been possible because his record is not very good. So in any case what he tried fizzled out was not able to grab power and it's obvious that the authorities were prepared for it. It looks as though they knew such a thing would happen because there were confrontations between Wagner and Russian soldiers. So a compromise was negotiated as I said earlier but this is not the end of the story. So it is possible that Wagner may have a new group, new leader and they may become loyal to Putin again or they may gain strength among the oligarchs as you know Russia is run by a number of oligarchs, the powerful barons, the rich billionaires. So because of all this it is a loss for Putin but of course he is fighting the war and there is no signal that there will be any end to the war very soon but there is expectation that this particular experience may have taught Putin a lesson. He could either be conciliatory to make sure that his soldiers remain with him and the other oligarchs do not create such problems or on the other hand he may become very ruthless but he seems to be taking the first line of being reasonable and rational and trying to contain the situation and fight the war against NATO. There are very dangerous signals, drones seem to have flown over Putin's palace and various other things are happening and President Zelensky is in a very good mood, NATO is supporting him fully and there have been reports most recently that the CIA has soldiers in Ukraine, this is something which they had never accepted but seems to have been some development of a CIA being involved in a secret war in Ukraine. At the same time, efforts are being made, G20 is supposed to meet in September and in fact today or yesterday there was an indication that Mr Putin will actually come to Delhi. This has been a matter of speculation whether Xi Jinping and Putin will come to Delhi because Pakistan is also a Christian marketer they want to come to Delhi and that is the reason why recently the Shanghai Cooperation Summit would not be held in person because originally all of them are supposed to come to Delhi but this would not have been the moment for all of them to come to Delhi and fight against each other and so I think our Prime Minister very wisely turned it into an online meeting so that means they don't have to move anywhere they can sit in the comfort of their own palaces and make statements etc and that is what they did and Shanghai Cooperation as you know as several elements which are not suitable for India that's another problem. I've always wondered why we are in the Shanghai Cooperation because it was not meant for countries like India, it was meant for the previous Soviet Soviet Socialist Republics and it was basically under the control of the Russians and later the Chinese because it has formed in Shanghai so Chinese dominated and Russia support China in that effort and these small Central Asian republics are all part of it they have no choice and so in that what was the point of India entering it I don't know but we decided because we have an interest in Central Asia and we thought if this group we are a member we might be able to influence them but so far we have not managed to do that that they speak with one voice with Russia and China and our voice is not heard very much but we still were persisting with it and by rotation we got the chairmanship so we very obligingly organized this conference online mercifully otherwise there would have been more difficulties and one of the problems we faced was that there was an endorsement of the Belt and Road Initiative which India could not have accepted because Belt and Road Initiative one of these projects runs through occupied Kashmir so that is not something which is acceptable and that is why we have kept out of Belt and Road Initiative but then all other countries in the CEO are supportive of it and there was so a proposal was made to make a statement in support of the Belt and Road Initiative so we made it very clear that we will not be able to so that conference was not such a great success but within them excluding India, Pakistan etc they may have had some discussions and some decisions and now Iran is being admitted to that and so it's taking another color which may not be very fruitful for us so and so far the G20 discussions on what's happening in Ukraine have not been successful. The foreign ministers meeting decided not to have a joint communicate because unlike in Bali summit where there was a communicate acceptable to both Russia, China and the United States and supposedly negotiated by us and President Biden specifically said that India played a role and there was some recognition of India's role because India since it was able to speak to both sides with conviction and also they wanted peace so people thought that this would be a good idea that India had this position rather than a position of condemnation of Russia and that is what of course led to the visit of our Prime Minister to Washington because the difficulties relating to the Ukraine, India's position on Ukraine was forgiven and forgotten as it were in order to improve relations between India and the United States with an eye on China so this is what really happened we talked about in the last episode so these are all various developments taking place and therefore people are looking at the situation in Delhi in September so in September if Putin himself is there and the Chinese president is there and Pakistan Prime Minister is there then there would be some kind of a possibility of some compromise but people don't expect that because both sides Russia and the United States have only further enhanced their battle capabilities in Ukraine because the Secretary of State was in Beijing and now the Secretary of Commerce for finance she's going there she's already there and so efforts are being made of course to create some kind of peace between China and the US because China is a very important factor in this war because they are openly on the side of the Russians so many things are happening which we do not know but everything is now focusing towards the September summit of G20. G20 as I have been saying has certain capability to deal with this because none of the members as a veto and all the most important countries of the world are there and therefore if there is an agreement there they could have a better impact on the world situation but that is not yet to be seen on the ground but why I'm saying this is already been covered but what I'm saying is that in this delicate moment the crisis that Putin has faced may have an adverse impact on the situation because we do not know the extent of what the Wagner group has done and they are also talking about recruiting new mercenaries from other countries and one of the groups now showing interest in going to Russia after you're in this group are the Gurkhas in Nepal you know they go and work for fight for any country but they are a kind of respectable soldiers or they have a certain amount of cold of contact very heroic etc so they are not considered mercenaries they're considered respectable soldiers hired by other countries they are not fighting for their country but certainly they are not doing anything of a criminal character and that is a good thing about the Gurkhas so it's quite possible that some Gurkhas may join and that may be a balancing factor in this whole exercise but we should realize that all around the world these things exist mercenaries exist governments have a secret operation to do things and then deny it so they all have not only spy organizations but also spy organization with a little punch in it that they are able to also act not merely collect information so they collect information analyze it and even take action as necessary beyond the ground as Wagner group did with the Russian soldiers and gave the impression that they were trying to capture the Russian army so this adds this particular event adds to the complexity of the Ukraine war because we know now that Putin is not the only actor because we all been thinking that's all in the one man's head and we have to study his mentality his trends his past that's exactly what we're all doing but we know that now there are other actors some of them as powerful as the Wagner group which has recorded in several countries several African countries they have been there Libya they have been there Mali they have been there and so what were they doing there Syria Lebanon Libya all these countries this group has been working and now Mr. Putin has publicly stated that all their expenses were being met by the state not him personally and that is a revelation which nobody knew and the Russian people were not privy to that information which has come out so we have to wait and see how the Wagner group behaves in the future whether it will lead to a bigger plot against the president Putin and that is what he has avoided by making peace with them suppose they had gone to fight against them to possible that others may also join them so he did not want to test that so after saying that we will finish you off punish you etc isn't 24 hours in a good way compromise and not compromise is one sided because Wagner has all the advantages they can do what they want they will not go to jail and they'll probably be reinstated as they have before and all these may happen so we have to watch this and see how the war goes after this so far things do not look bright but it looks like Putin is getting ready to continue there and that's a good sign but then there are several months before that and I think I met anything that happened as it happened on the 24th of July and ended on 26th of July so it's a fascinating mysterious activity but this is how to take into account in analyzing the situation okay well SEO does not have a specific position on the war because it is basically regional grouping so since Russia and China are there we can imagine what their position will be but then India and Pakistan are also there therefore they cannot if they take a direct position on the war then they will not have the acceptance of at least India and even some of the Central Asian republics may not join so they don't have a position on this and they did not have a joint agreement there are differences in that how can India deal with BRI and pearl of strings well these are old questions they have been in existence the string of pearl was there and it is there but we are dealing with the pearls so that they don't harm us as a string so we are improving our bilateral relations with all these countries and there are some improvements so they're not as solidly behind China as they used to be and BRI there is nothing we can do but Russians themselves I'm sorry Chinese themselves are seeing that this is not a workable proposition because they are investing in these countries and all those investments are being shown as a debt and all these countries are getting into a debt trap and they get infrastructure which they may not need or beyond their needs and therefore people are dissolutioned already so it's quite possible that some of them may withdraw some are already done and the enthusiasm is not there and therefore we do not need to do anything it lights on natural debt that's not we don't our relations with USA does not depend on one or two phases in inside Moscow that's all understood that's its their own system is such it is not a fully legitimate system so they have all kinds of aspects in it but we go we are dealt with Russia Soviet Union and Russia as it is beneficial to us in whatever way and therefore that does not be a factor in our relations with the United States so what has happened is the United States is now offering us technology which they normally do not give to non allies and they have accepted our non alignment and they say but still we need you so take these weapons and equipment yourself to meet the Chinese threat and that is something and very courageous of them to offer and even more courageous of us to accept that this is not the last word there will be other opinions within India in the international community many things that we still sorted out and that will take its own course well all this diaspora has really no role in this diaspora is part of our soft power and they basically support us by getting their governments to take a friendly position towards India at least in the United States of Russia and UK that is the role that the diasporas play they'll continue to play that and the rivalry between US and China has helped us in this that they are becoming closer to us because of their increasing fear of China but the diaspora has managed it but is it strategic neutrality we say no it is not neutrality in that sense because we are against aggression we want the war to end but our position is one of peacemaking and that will carry on till the war ends because we are no interested in involving it we the whole world is in crisis because of that and therefore it is important for the war to end and that is what it is what it is not that is being tried China is trying India is trying there may be others there is a move for what is called the dollarization and that's an effort being made to move away from the unipolar world because unipolar world depends also on the power of the United States and if the power of the United States is less there is a better opportunity for a multi-polar world to develop so universalization of Indian rupees is far away because the United States is not going to crumble like that Chinese are also making enough Iranians are trying and we heard some reports that some rupee payments have been made to Russia for oil but that is also not new because we have had a rupee ruble agreement with Russia even before so these are all but small movements moves which have to be watched it may grow into something bigger but at the moment I wouldn't say the universalization of the rupee is a possibility you may know that several Gulf countries that rupee as a legal tender for several years Indian rupee it was called the Gulf Indian rupee and it ended because there was difficulty in international marketing they probably joined with one purpose and once you join a group it is very difficult to get out of it and that will create unnecessary so possibly we should have taken this into into consideration when we joined so unless there is any big provocation we are not going to withdraw from it we can we may be absent we may not join the decision making because it is a Chinese organization I must say not because we are a democracy we want people to know it has to be transparent who we are friendly with what kind of army we have our kind of organizations we have we also have a external agency which collects information where they take any action I don't know but India is a sovereign country as you know so whatever may have been issued by the international court is not really applicable unless we agree to that that is the difference about international court of justice is not automatically applicable to sovereign states so in fact you can take a case to the international court of justice only if all the parties agree so strictly legal position may not be applicable to us well recently there has been a talk about reforming the UN recently I have myself dealt with it for 37 years it is very old it started out right from the beginning after the after the UN was established even when it was being established there were proposals to reform and it was reformed from 9 to 15 security council number was expanded so it is not it's a continuing process of reforming of the UN but new permanent members there is a problem because not only permanent members but also non-permanent members agree that there should be new permanent members so is it not an issue of permanent members alone even non-permanent members small countries do not support it because they have no advantage in India or Brazil or Japan or Germany becoming permanent members what will they get the permanent members will act in their own interests so another country to be included in the permanent member line as you say it is not like so what do you think is the next best thing that can be done nothing we keep pressurizing we keep emphasizing the discriminatory aspect of it Prime Minister speaks very strongly some countries have privately supported publicly opposed publicly supported privately opposed all these games are going on by my judgment to you yet meant on this is that this is not likely in the near future there may be some improvement some more permanent non-permanent members may be included it may be more longer terms or non-permanent members and things like that so this has no impact on that because we have a one China policy like everybody else even US has a one China policy but they are not willing to accept Taiwan as part of China that's the difference so they would want both China and Taiwan to coexist and we also have good relations with Taiwan we have an office a diplomatic office in Taiwan because we don't call him an ambassador your brother was there but we call him special representative or trade representative or something but we have very good collaboration with Taiwan in many ways it said powerful country and the population 2334 million people and very much close to us our country and close to China so this is some important for us and then we recognize that much but formally we cannot recognize because we can only recognize one China we keep our relations at the present level or better with Russia we have benefits but at the same time there are very many limitations in Russia's capability particularly now because since the war has started their supplies to India including s 400 have been dwindled we still don't know when all this will be available but for us to alter it and change into some other country that is not easy to do because the percentages are very high so please explain the bifurcation between signatory and ratification in agreement and their conditions please notice bifurcation the country has the right to ratify if they don't want to ratify that is not binding on you because at the time of the CTBT that's the comprehensive treatment which is a lot of pressure applied on India saying that if you do not sign there will be sanctions against you but that is absolutely nonsensical all agreements are by agreement and you cannot take action against somebody for not signing an agreement and we have got away with it nobody has done anything to us we have not signed it yet so such blackmail is not acceptable will the said negotiations include something other than membership of over Ukraine what could be other potential terms of negotiation I don't really know but it started as you all know because of Russian fear that Ukraine will join NATO because there was an understanding that Ukraine and many other countries will join NATO later like the multiple public and even most recently Finland and so on the understanding that they will not be allowed to join and that situation has changed but NATO has been careful not to admit NATO admit Ukraine into NATO because that means they will have to openly fight against Russia so that is the reason why I suppose they are going slow on that and so they would prefer not to have an open confrontation with Russia as NATO but through Ukraine and try and to weaken Russia so that Ukraine can also be an independent country are we not implying to the world that we are sliding towards authoritarianism by not condemning Putin and Swar not at all because that's a different matter whether we are authoritarian or not it is our choice but we are not giving any implication any suggestion that we are also going to be authority the Prime Minister was very open in this in Washington normally he doesn't talk about it when such situation such questions are raised but he said it very very very clearly where he gets tax and our constitutional provisions are and how it is necessary for to fight terrorism and other anti-social elements so terrorism ends and in general confusion ends then there will be as beneficent and as benevolent democracy as it has always been so but that also US has acknowledged it because before Prime Minister Modi went to US 75 parliamentarians demanded that he should be asked questions about human rights situation in India some of them did not attend but all this 75 did not keep out of the joint session that Prime Minister Modi addressed so it is a general sentiment in the United States for the poor people for minorities that was part of their tradition so the government is legally required to raise these issues with other governments and even against the communist governments and others about China they raise a huge noise but in our case it is some people who are either good intentioned or with bad intentions they criticize India and try to project India as an authoritarian country but that is now over by our joining with US against China in practical terms we have shown that we will be with democracies we will not be with autocracies the new world order may consist of autocracies on one side and democracies are on the other and we have to naturally be on the side of democracies and that is what we are doing about not in a military sense certainly not so even our human resources are available to the whole world and we go there many many Indians are lining up for visas in many countries we don't consider it as a negative problem they'll go there maybe they get better opportunities or they will create better opportunities as it has happened in the Gulf so it all brings only credit to India so I'm not against Indians migrating to other countries but of course if they are going to join foreign armies and things like that IS and so on then that is a dangerous friend and we should prevent that so just because we have people it doesn't mean that they must go and fight unholy wars and create problems of our friendly countries so that we will not accept and we will not join whether we have human resources or not well India joined NATO or or class that has been completely denied by the foreign minister that he's at the prime minister also said this is not in our DNA joining military alliances and that question does not arise but Americans have a kind of category of non-nato alliances and that is what they are aiming at but certainly not NATO but by accepting all these technological transfers etc we are virtually doing that in fact we are moving towards US-centered defense program but the ultimate utilization will be ours we are going to pay money for these things it's not free and therefore it is only fair enough that we make use of that recently the US senators have been kind of pushing India to join NATO yet we have already discussed that citing easy transfer technology and defense equipment this choice we had in 1947 don't forget that before any of this happened prime minister narrow said we are not joining either of them otherwise it both the groups are willing to welcome us so we will have an obligation to meddle in the affairs that we don't want to in the first place we will not so what is your opinion on the pushing and cooling down done by the senators yes they are considering America's interests and we will take care of Indian interests just because they are saying that we are not going to jump into it that's an option we had in 1947 we have rejected it then we rejected now we would rather stick to our good old strategy got on and our foreign minister has recently said that non-alignment is non-negotiable so that is our position we are already facing a lot of challenge because Ukraine had many interests in us we have many interests in Ukraine it is a land of grain land of oil all these are required for us and the stoppage of rail import export even NATO is trying to get it relaxed so we will have to work within the present conditions that is if Ukraine is totally free and Russians leave control then they will come back to us or we may have our 20,000 medical students going back to Ukraine happy days may come back but as of now we have to operate within this situation but we are not respecting the Russian sanctions against Ukraine and because that's not in our interest so we are not bursting sanctions because these sanctions are imposed by one country it is not a UN sanctions so we are not obliged to do that it's an optional thing and so we have decided not to engage in that yes they are not fighting for cashmere or sending troops there but there is a OIC that is organization for Islamic cooperation has a position and these people are pressurized by Pakistan every time there is an OIC meeting and they all pass a resolution and then they come to us most of them tell us the UN when I was there soon after an OIC meeting they will seek a meeting with us and say that you know our position is that this should be peaceful and resolved but you will understand that within the OIC we cannot really speak out against Pakistan and there is a brotherhood in old India but you know our policy so please don't worry that's what they normally tell us and we accept their word and they have not said Jihadis to cashmere or anything like that God forbid and so Egypt may say people of Egypt have a right to self-determination of people of Russia or Kashmir or they may say that Pakistan should be a referendum or plebiscite and such things are technical they have no value in the person they want this part of India forever and forever and so these things are purely diplomaties for people like me when I was a diplomat you know we made a living out of all this arguments and counter arguments and positions and counter positions and so that is how diplomats live so let us live into them but be sure that nothing is going to happen in these cases it will have to be a long struggle to convince Pakistan and that will be in their own interest to resolve this issue and that's all that I can say and that day will come soon on our way. Thank you very much it was a very rich discussion we discussed almost everything though we are using Wagner as an excuse so thank you very much for all those questions very much by the way