The Regime of Civilian Militarism: The Origins and Conditions of the Systemic Conflict Between Putin and the Army

The phenomenon of civilian militarism

At present, the Putin regime fits the definition of a militaristic system. According to plausible estimates, around 5 million people, more than 6% of the working-age population, are engaged in combat operations against Ukraine and in arms production, while approximately 40% of state expenditure is allocated to defence and security. However, the defining feature of such a regime is not the formal scale of military employment, but its hypertrophied readiness to respond to any serious challenge with military force. The principal mode of existence of a militaristic regime is either waging war or preparing for it (→ Vagts: A History of Militarism). The invasion of Ukraine, which followed the ultimatum issued by the Kremlin to the United States and NATO in 2021, is a clear example of militaristic logic, in which military force is treated not as a means of defence and deterrence but as an instrument for achieving political objectives.

This does not, however, mean that the military exercises decisive or even primary influence over foreign or domestic policy in such a system. The distinctive feature of the Putin regime lies in the fact that it has been created and is governed by civilian militarists, most of whom, including Vladimir Putin himself, originate from the FSB. While they are security-oriented in their mindset, they are by no means professional soldiers.

The key distinction between civilian militarists and professional military officers lies in the substance and form of their response to challenges. Professional military personnel approach war preparation from the standpoint of military science. Even where ultimate objectives may be irrational, they are trained to develop operationally coherent plans and to accumulate in advance the forces and resources required for their implementation. A classic example of this genuinely militarist approach is the activity of the German General Staff before the First World War. The ‘Schlieffen Plan’, calculated in detail almost to the minute, envisaged victory in a two-front war. Regardless of its underlying realism, the industrial, social and economic policy of the Second Reich was subordinated to preparing for its execution.

By contrast, as the historian of militarism Alfred Vagts observed, civilian militarists tend to absorb and prioritise the external features of military culture, such as oaths, symbols, traditions and customs, etc. (→ Vagts: A History of Militarism). Yet they lack an understanding of the internal mechanisms by which armed forces function. As a result, key decisions taken by civilian militarists are shaped by their own conceptions of pride and national dignity, for which militarism serves as an expression, while the army is treated as an instrument for implementing these conceptions.

The launch of the so-called ‘special military operation’ in 2022 illustrates this approach. The decision to invade was not based on a calculation of actual forces and resources, nor on a realistic assessment of the tasks the armed forces could accomplish. Rather, it stemmed from Vladimir Putin’s understanding of national pride and his perception that Ukraine’s aspiration, in one form or another, to join the Euro-Atlantic community undermined Russia’s role as a ‘great’ or regional power.

This contradiction between rational and metaphysical approaches to military affairs inevitably led to serious conflicts between the Kremlin and the military establishment, which are now finding a temporary resolution in the repression of the former defense minister’s inner circle and the top echelons of the military.

From harmony to reform: the crisis of the conscript army

For almost the entire two decades of Putin’s rule leading up to the war, relations between the president and the military leadership were marked by superficial harmony. As befits a civilian militarist, Putin enthusiastically participated in all the outward manifestations of military life: he donned every possible variation of uniforms designed for him, flew in fighter jets, plunged into the depths of the sea in submarines, and launched strategic missiles during exercises.

For a time, the leadership of the Ministry of Defence managed to convince the president that a reduced version of the Soviet mass mobilisation army remained fully viable. All that was required, generals insisted, was adequate funding. Putin fulfilled his part of this implicit bargain: prior to the war, military spending grew steadily by nearly 20% annually. The real cost of this fiction became apparent during the short war with Georgia in 2008. Virtually none of the core elements of a mass mobilisation army functioned as intended. Nearly half of the tanks and armoured vehicles held in storage failed even to reach the Georgian border, while officers serving in so-called cadre divisions, staffed at less than 40%, refused to assume command, recognising their own inability to do so. On the eve of the reforms, and as justification for them, both military (→ Shamanov: The War Confirmed the Need for Reforms) and mainstream (→ Interfax: Military News-2008), wrote about these failures with a degree of candour.

The response to this crisis came in the form of Anatoly Serdyukov’s reforms. He disbanded the cadre divisions, drastically reduced the number of units and formations in the armed forces, and eliminated about 130,000 officer posts. In effect, this meant abandoning a mass mobilisation army. In its place, Putin received about 30 combat-ready formations capable of executing orders almost immediately, without additional mobilisation, and achieving victory in short-term local conflicts that might arise along Russia’s borders. More serious military threats, which at the time appeared largely hypothetical, were to be deterred by nuclear forces. This approach was codified in the 2010 version of the military doctrine.

Putin made use of combat-ready units at the first opportunity, first in the seizure of Crimea and subsequently in Donbas, albeit under a different defence minister. As is well known, the annexation of Crimea led to a surge in his popularity. The military, favoured by the president, also found themselves in a comfortable position. They understood that nuclear forces provided a reliable guarantee against any direct military threat. This allowed them to focus on organising increasingly elaborate military exercises, staging ever more grandiose parades, and producing ever more florid reports claiming that the Russian army was no longer the second but the first in the world. To demonstrate progress, metrics were devised such as the largely meaningless ‘percentage of new equipment in the troops’ in the armed forces.

Enthralled by this ceremonial dimension, the supreme commander preferred not to engage with the details. He did not, for example, ask why none of the weapons systems supposedly without foreign equivalents, such as the Sarmat intercontinental missile, the Su-57 fifth-generation fighter or the Armata tank with its unmanned turret, ever went into mass production.

The first crisis: the fiasco of civilian militarism

The central problem for the military was that Putin believed their upbeat reports and, as a classical civilian militarist, concluded that his reformed army was capable of anything. The resulting disaster occurred when, acting on this confidence, he ordered preparations for an invasion of Ukraine and the seizure of a large European country. The leadership of the General Staff fully understood that, following Serdyukov’s reforms, they did not possess the necessary number of troops for such an operation. The very purpose of those reforms had been to abandon the Soviet concept of a large-scale frontal war with NATO and the kind of army required for such a task. Yet it was impossible to convey this to a president who was a prisoner of his own delusions. As is often the case in autocracies, and guided by a sense of self-preservation, the military leadership chose to act as if they believed the FSB’s reports that Ukrainian forces would greet Russian troops with bread and salt and flowers. In reality, they had little alternative. It was not possible to plan a military operation that corresponded to the task that had been set.

As a result, in violation of the principles of rational planning and under conditions of an evident shortage of forces, the Russian army was sent to seize Ukraine without even defining a main axis of advance, with troops moving along four directions of equal priority. Rosgvardia units, lacking heavy weaponry and without air or air defence cover, formed part of the first wave of the invasion: their role was not to fight but to accept capitulation.

For the same reason, the system of command over the ‘special military operation’ remained a series of improvisations until early 2023. At the outset of the invasion, there was no unified command at all. The operation was directed by the commanders of four military districts, whose forces formed the attacking groupings. These groupings, together with their attached air units, effectively operated autonomously. In April 2022, foreign sources reported that General Alexander Dvornikov had been appointed commander-in-chief, but there were no official statements to that effect. It was not until October, seven months after the start of the war, that Sergei Surovikin was officially appointed commander; he remained in post for less than 100 days. For a long time, it was unclear which body was responsible for operational planning. As indicated by an official statement, in December 2022, Putin visited a ‘joint headquarters of the military branches involved in the special military operation’, a name that itself implied the absence of a unified command structure.

Thus, the armed forces were unprepared for the task assigned to them, while the military leadership either did not dare, or was unable, to warn the supreme commander-in-chief against flawed decisions. This marked the first crisis in relations between Putin and the military.

The second crisis: the fragmentation of the chain of command and Its consequences

The generals, who hated Serdyukov’s reforms, offered Putin the only solution they knew, namely, a return to the concept of a mass mobilization army. In September 2022, a 'partial' mobilisation was announced, which helped stabilise the front. Subsequently, reverting to the Soviet concept of 'deep defence', a defensive 'Surovikin Line' was hastily constructed, enabling Russian forces to withstand the Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2023.

However, it proved impossible to replicate the Soviet mobilisation model. The announcement of mobilisation prompted hundreds of thousands of young people to leave the country, demonstrating the limits of coercion. To ensure a steady flow of manpower, the authorities drew on the experience of the First World War, when the tsarist government provided substantial payments to the families of conscripts (→ Pushkareva, Shcherbinin: The Organisation of Relief for the Families of Lower-Ranking Soldiers During World War I), as well as on the existing practices of private military companies (PMCs). Another major innovation was the recruitment of prisoners, overseen by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had previously supervised private military contractors and the recruitment of 'volunteers' for the war in Donbas. A form of quasi-market relationship emerged: Prigozhin received vast sums to sustain his penal formations, while the units of his Wagner PMC, although supplied by the Ministry of Defence, did not fall under the command of the armed forces. In effect, Putin abandoned the principle of unity of command, again characteristic of civilian militarism, thereby creating the conditions for a second crisis in his relations with the military.

The leadership of the Ministry of Defence quickly recognised both the advantages of deploying prisoners on the battlefield and the risks associated with the emergence of an alternative military establishment. From February 2023, it began recruiting prisoners itself, prohibiting Prigozhin from continuing to do so. The personnel of Wagner, which had suffered heavy losses, began to decline rapidly, followed by a sharp reduction in the financial flows reaching Prigozhin. This marked the beginning of his open conflict with the Ministry’s leadership, which the Kremlin observed in a state of evident confusion. Prigozhin, who held neither military rank nor public office, commanded mercenary units while openly ignoring Shoigu’s order requiring ‘volunteer formations’ to subordinate themselves to army command.

Moreover, he demonstrated that high-ranking Russian generals, both retired and active-duty, were effectively under his operational authority. According to Prigozhin, Surovikin, then deputy commander of Russian forces, was responsible for supplying Wagner, while Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, after being removed from his post as deputy defence minister, became Prigozhin’s deputy. In other words, Prigozhin was constructing an alternative command structure for his forces, drawing on prominent figures within the military. The example of Mizintsev was duly noted within the officer corps, which understood that, in the event of conflict with official command, an alternative now existed in the form of a competing military organisation. This threatened to undermine the entire system of military subordination.

As is well known, the confrontation between Prigozhin and the Ministry of Defence culminated in an armed mutiny: on 22–23 June, Wagner units advanced towards Moscow. Regardless of its ultimate objectives, the mutiny in some sense opened a Pandora’s box, demonstrating to the military a pathway for direct intervention in domestic politics. Over the past century, the Russian army has been drawn into internal political struggles on three occasions. The first two episodes were the arrest of Lavrentiy Beria in 1953 and the army’s support for Nikita Khrushchev during the attempt by the so-called 'anti-party group' to remove him in 1957. It is worth noting that the army’s support for Khrushchev, and that of Marshal Georgy Zhukov in particular, was largely driven by hostility within the military establishment towards the NKVD–MGB system, which Khrushchev sought to bring under party control. In the third episode, the 1991 coup attempt, the army’s refusal to suppress civilian resistance proved decisive in the ultimate failure of the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP). This episode illustrates how attempts by unpopular and weakly legitimate political actors to instrumentalise the military can ultimately backfire.

In any case, Prigozhin’s mutiny clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of the political leadership when confronted by a direct challenge from military actors possessing recent combat experience in a variety of settings, including urban warfare. It is also important to emphasise that the mutiny was not suppressed. It was halted by Prigozhin and the PMC leadership themselves, who, despite what appeared to be a negotiated compromise, were subsequently killed in a staged plane crash. The crackdown took place, but there is no confirmation that civilian militarists are capable of resisting a military revolt if its leaders do not back down themselves.

'Purges' and the spectre of military opposition

In an authoritarian state at war, the position of defence minister, which under normal conditions is intended to translate the political leadership’s views into the framework of military policy and implement them, becomes redundant. In wartime, military policy becomes the central element of state life, and the political leader, activating his role as supreme commander-in-chief, effectively directs military operations personally through the General Staff. The intermediary layer represented by the defence minister becomes unnecessary. It is no coincidence that throughout the Second World War Stalin himself formally held the post of People’s Commissar for Defence, while orders and directives were issued to the armed forces via the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command.

A similar system appears to be in place today. Putin sets military-political objectives directly before the General Staff. In these circumstances, the former Minister for Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, with his largely ceremonial military rank, became a superfluous element within the command structure. An experienced administrator and skilled court politician, Shoigu attempted to reinvent himself, trying on the jacket of Stalin, the 'iron' People’s Commissar for Armaments, by touring defence enterprises and publicly reprimanding their managers before television cameras, but this proved ineffective.

Shoigu’s dismissal opened the way for a ‘purge’ within the defence establishment. In addition to Ruslan Tsalikov, those arrested included Deputy Minister Timur Ivanov; Army Generals Dmitry Bulgakov and Pavel Popov; Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin, Deputy Chief of the General Staff and head of the Main Directorate of Communications; Lieutenant General Yuri Kuznetsov, head of the Ministry’s Main Personnel Directorate; and Major General Ivan Popov, former commander of the 58th Army. The number of detained military and civilian officials has exceeded a dozen. Moreover, both members of Shoigu’s ‘team' who joined the ministry with him and long-standing representatives of the military establishment have fallen foul of the crackdown.

The explanation that these repressions reflect the Kremlin’s effort to combat corruption within the defence establishment is superficially plausible but ultimately unconvincing. Not only the Ministry of Defence but the armed forces as a whole are permeated by corrupt practices at every level. Within the existing system, once an officer reaches even a relatively modest position, such as the command of a separate battalion, involvement in such practices becomes almost inevitable, with bribes and kickbacks forming part of everyday professional life. In wartime, when state expenditure on the military has increased severalfold, the scale of this shadow economy has grown accordingly. Yet the charges brought against those detained represent only the tip of the iceberg and do not, in substance, address this system of relationships.

Nor is the explanation that the ‘purges’ are intended to assign responsibility for military failures entirely persuasive. Over the past two years, under the leadership of Andrei Belousov’s team at the Ministry of Defence, the Russian army has likewise failed to achieve significant victories. Meanwhile, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and his immediate subordinates, who are directly responsible for planning and conducting military operations, remain in their posts, even though it is they, rather than the administrative figures associated with Shoigu, who bear primary responsibility for the failures of 2022 and the lack of decisive results in the offensives of 2024–2025. The military is well aware of this.

Rather, the 'purges' should be viewed as a continuation of the crises in relations between the military establishment and the 'civilian militarists' discussed above. In other words, the underlying driver of the repressions is the Kremlin’s fear of a potential military opposition. The next Prigozhin may not be a former convict, but a general with genuine standing within the armed forces, especially given that the army currently fighting in Ukraine in some respects resembles a private military company more than, for example, the Soviet regular army. The case of Major General Ivan Popov, former commander of the 58th Army, is particularly illustrative. Repressive measures were taken against him after he entered into direct conflict with Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov and addressed his subordinates, explaining the reasons for the dispute and referring to them as ‘my gladiators’ in his message (Popov’s call sign was 'Spartacus'). The historical analogy was unmistakable, and Popov paid for it with his career, rank and freedom.

The ideological and social dimensions of discontent

It is clear that irritation and apprehension in relations between Putin and the military are not one-sided. The military, for their part, are likely to feel no less frustration. Publicly, they continue to express loyalty to the supreme commander-in-chief. Yet certain examples of internal, highly formalised military analysis allow one to discern how events in the protracted war against Ukraine, and their causes, are understood within the armed forces. Despite internal censorship and fear of superiors, military analysts appear to feel a need to explain why the Russian army has, for four years, failed to defeat an evidently weaker opponent.

In some cases, for the sake of safety, 'military science' has been singled out as the target of criticism, as it has allegedly proved incapable of predicting not only the nature of the war, which has assumed the form of a stalemate, but also the possibility of Western countries uniting into an 'anti-Russian military coalition' (→ Bulletin of the Academy of Military Sciences: Two Years of Special Military Operations). On the one hand, such foresight lies only marginally within the remit of military science and pertains more to political planning. On the other hand, such passages should be read in the context of a fact well understood within the army: the decision to launch the operation was not taken by the military but imposed upon them from above. Similarly, an author writing in the journal 'Military Thought’, while deliberately depersonalising criticism, notes that ‘information regarding the moral and psychological condition of Ukrainian armed forces personnel proved inaccurate. Expected assumptions about their unwillingness to resist and readiness to surrender en masse did not materialise' (→ Voennaya Mysl: Main Directions for Improving Military-Political Work in the Preparation of Operations). It is evident that within military circles, there are established views as to who bears responsibility for the failures of the war, and in the event of a future crisis, those responsible may be named explicitly.

During the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the army has suffered not only substantial material losses, including the destruction of elite units and the deaths of a number of generals, but also reputational damage. From the military’s perspective, these losses stem from the decisions of civilian militarists, yet in the eyes of society responsibility may be assigned to the armed forces themselves. This tension cannot but generate further resentment within the military establishment.

However, another systemic issue is emerging in relations between Putin and the military, one that is not directly tied to the ongoing war. This is the problem of generational succession, an issue inherent to any authoritarian system. Because the supreme leader remains in power indefinitely, the same tends to apply to his closest associates. It is for this reason that Putin has signed decrees allowing the service terms of army generals to be extended at presidential discretion, while colonel-generals may serve up to the age of 70. Such arrangements, however, are ill-suited to military service, where promotion, rank and appointment are closely tied to age limits and institutional renewal. Any army depends on clear and predictable rules. When the supreme authority, responsible for maintaining the stability of the system, begins to violate those rules, it provokes significant discontent.

For his part, PPutin has reason to be wary of the emergence of a new generation of senior commanders, who came of age in the 1990s, when the Soviet Army was disintegrating. These officers have now acquired experience in a war that is both strategically questionable and, to a degree, commercialised, and has not produced decisive success. Formed in an environment marked by persistent misrepresentation and performative reporting, their adherence to traditional institutional ethical norms may be weakened. Moreover, they have closely observed the experience of Prigozhin’s parallel military structure and the subsequent mutiny, which has broadened their understanding of the dynamics between the armed forces and political authority.

At the same time, the protracted Russia–Ukraine war appears to have assumed a definitively positional character. As the history of classical positional warfare, notably the First World War, suggests, decisive developments in such conflicts often occur not on the battlefield but within the political sphere. In Imperial Russia, it was the generals, who demanded that Nicholas II abdicate, who helped trigger the revolutionary process. To be sure, current relations between Putin and the military elite do not point to the likelihood of a comparable crisis. Nonetheless, these relations are far from harmonious and pose acute questions of political survival for both sides.