An Army of Mercenaries

 As the Ukraine-Russia war took another fatal turn this week—with Ukraine now occupying a piece of Russian territory—I found myself thinking back to the short-lived moment, roughly a year ago, when we thought this conflict might actually be about to end. It was at that point that Putin's one-time stooge, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led a short-lived mutiny that looked for a day or two like it might actually result in a full-scale coup. 

Of course, even if Prigozhin had succeeded in removing Putin from power, that would be no guarantee he would end the war. As the leader of the vile mercenary force, the Wagner Group, Prigozhin was no humanitarian or friend to Ukraine. Still, his willingness to oppose Putin, when no one else dared, made him seem a suddenly more interesting figure. And his horrific murder, a few months later (we're coming up this week on the one-year anniversary of his death), granted him a tragic luster. 

Of course, Prighozin's revolt failed. It didn't last long. And doubtless, the spectacle of a challenge to his authority only made Putin more dangerous and paranoid. Thus, if Prigozhin was like the "one, fearless," who "turned and clawed like bronze," in a poem by Isaac Rosenberg—then Putin—like Rosenberg's tyrannical deity—would only "weigh the heavier on those after." So, I doubt anyone's life became freer or better for Prigozhin making his short-lived attempt to remove Putin from power. 

There are some, then, who would say—with Hugh MacDiarmid—that: Prigozhin and his mutineers "were professional murderers and they took/ Their blood money and impious risks and died," so we should spare them no tears. This was what MacDiarmid said of any "Army of Mercenaries," after all. Responding to a poem by A.E. Housman that offered such an army measured praise, MacDiarmid retorted it was "a God-damned lie to say that these/ Saved, or knew, anything worth any man's pride." 

History's judgment is often unfairly contingent upon success, however—and yet, success so often depends on forces entirely beyond our control. If Prigozhin had prevailed in his abortive attempt, we might say of him and the other mutineers that—despite being an army of mercenaries—they nonetheless "saved the sum of things," just as Housman wrote. It is only the fact that they conspicuously failed that makes us more likely to plump for the MacDiarmid side of the argument. 

And so, I'm inclined to take Housman's side on this one. Prigozhin certainly did take his share of "blood money and impious risks" by leading Putin's mercenary force, just as MacDiarmid wrote. He was not a good person. So, one could perhaps say—he had it coming. Live by the sword, die by the sword. And yet, he at least tried something that no one else had dared. And if he had succeeded—who knows how many lives might have been spared than have instead been lost, over the past year? 

After all, in the year since Prigozhin's death, the war seems only to have gotten further from ending. Not only has Putin continued his brutal invasion; now Ukraine is also counter-striking into Russian territory, turning thousands of Russian civilians into refugees in their own country. This perilous cycle of escalation may now never stop. I am reminded of something Khrushchev once said: "war ends [only] when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction."

MacDiarmid was unrelenting in his belief that someone like Prigozhin, in Prigozhin's unsavory line of work, could never be a moral hero. And he's probably right about that. Prigozhin was no hero. But Housman's appreciation for the moral complexity of such a situation was probably closer to the truth. Prigozhin deserves something better than our posthumous derision and contempt—better than to fall "unnotic'd all his worth," to quote a line from Byron. 

He deserves to be remembered as someone who—for all the iniquities of his career—had courage where all others lacked it. Had he prevailed, he might have "saved the sum of things" for innumerable Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and civilians who have lost their lives over the course of a year's continuation of the war that Putin caused. And, for his courage, Prigozhin paid the inevitable price. Who of us would have dared as much in his position?