If the story is an eternal restart, the roles of its protagonists are sometimes reversed. Did that thought cross General Sergey Surovikin’s mind that Friday evening, June 25, when he called, PP-2000 submachine gun in hand, Wagner’s mercenaries to obey Vladimir Putin? “I (you) ask to stop (…) Before it is too late, we must obey the will and the order of the elected president of Russia”, solemnly announced the deputy commander of the “special military operation” in Ukraine in a video posted on Telegram.
Shaved head, imperturbable face, the army general faces today Evgueni Prigojine, at the head of Wagner. The chief militiaman wears the same smooth skull, but his gaze is on the contrary distorted by the grimaces inspired by his fury. For months now, the mercenary has been ranting against the Russian army, which he considers incompetent and cowardly; for a few hours now he has even taken on the role of quasi-putschist. General Surovokin, vilified by the “musicians” – as they call themselves – of Wagner for having ceded the city of Kherson to the Ukrainians last fall, will he be able to subdue the mutineers?
At 56, Sergei Vladimirovich may remember his youthful years, when he was still just a simple captain barely out of the Afghan quagmire where he had excelled in the infantry. In August 1991, only a few months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he did not have in his hands the fate of an entire army, but that of a simple battalion of motorized riflemen, equipped with twenty BMP-1 and a BRDM-2, infantry combat and reconnaissance armored vehicles respectively.
Politically, Surovikin, despite his 25 years, was already not tender. It was therefore natural for the young captain to take the side of the putschists during the failed coup that held the Russian capital, Moscow, in suspense from August 19 to 22, 1991. Within the Communist Party, the hard line, furious against Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of openness cannot be resolved with the agony of the empire. Gennady Ivanovitch Yanaev, with the support of several ministers and part of the army and security services, tries to overthrow the last president of the USSR, who is under house arrest in his dacha in Crimea.
Far from the upper echelons, Captain Surovikin maneuvered his armored vehicles on the night of August 21 to 22 on the Garden Belt, the ring road that surrounds the center of Moscow. But the crowd, hostile to the putschists, erected roadblocks and hindered their movements. Sergei Vladimirovich warns the demonstrators that the 7.62 millimeter machine guns of the BMP-1 are loaded, the 73 guns too. The warning is not a deterrent. The convoy breaks through the barrage and escapes. In the assault, three young demonstrators were killed, six soldiers injured and a tank burned.
Near the Parliament, the resistance is organized against the putschists. The attack of the special forces, who refuse to obey the villainous orders, fails. Among the names of heroes, history retains that of the President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Boris Yeltsin, whose photograph, standing on a tank in front of the columns of Parliament, goes around the world. The coup failed, and Captain Surovikin was arrested.
Although weakened, Gorbachev is restored – for a few months only – to the head of the USSR. The young putschist officer spent seven months in detention, but was finally acquitted, because “he only followed orders”, recalls the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta. “Major Surovikin must be freed immediately,” even declared Boris Yeltsin, who took over as head of the new Russian federation in July 1991. Surprisingly, the Russian newspaper continued, calling him a “major,” the anti-coup leader Yeltsin even suggests that the rehabilitated former putschist be promoted because he would have “brilliantly acquitted himself of his military duty”.
After this brief experience of coups d’etat, Surovikin pursued his military career at full speed, eventually becoming an army general. In 2019, he commanded Russian forces in Syria, where his ruthlessness was confirmed. After having briefly been commander of the “special military operation” in Ukraine from October 2022 to January 2023, he gave way to General Gerasimov, the Chief of Staff of the Russian Armies, of which he remains since the deputy on the Ukrainian theater. And thirty-two years after the failed coup in Moscow, this time he no longer finds himself in the shoes of a putschist, but facing him.
