When Yevgeny Prigozhin angrily vowed Friday evening that he and thousands of his Wagner fighters would march into Russia to target what he sees as the country’s incompetent and corrupt military leadership, the Kremlin called the act a mutiny and threatened imprison him for 20 years. years.
But 24 hours later, when a Wagner convoy was only 200 kilometers from the capital, there was an abrupt turn.
It seemed that the country had avoided a possible coup, and Prigozhin, a Russian prison.
He waved to a small crowd of supporters as he was driven in a black van in Rostov-on-Don, a city near the Ukrainian border.
The Kremlin says it was destined for Belarus. Officials say Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal to de-escalate the situation and avoid bloodshed.
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How the brief uprising of the mercenaries could expose the weakness of the Putin government
If Russian President Vladimir Putin is unable to reassert his strength after fighters from Wagner’s private army briefly made a march on Moscow, it could become “a weakness that will be exploited, from a one way or another, by factions of Russia that have feared it in the past,” according to University of Toronto political science professor Aurel Braun.
While much remains unclear about the deal and the tumultuous period leading up to it, political observers believe the attempted coup has left President Vladimir Putin more vulnerable.
“I don’t see how Putin survives this because Putin would be so weakened by having to make a deal with a guy who openly challenged him,” said Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who is currently teaching at Cardiff University in Wales.
The Kremlin maintains that Putin never left Moscow, although there were reports that government planes left the capital.
It was more than 12 hours after Prigozhin announced his rebellion that Putin made a speech on state television in which he spoke of treachery and treachery and said that “internal unrest is a mortal threat” to state of Russia
Anti-terrorist measures were put in place in the city of Moscow, with roadblocks set up and positions held by police officers with machine guns.
Scenarios avoided after the agreement
When it looked like Wagner was going to enter the capital, Radchenko told CBC News that he saw three possible scenarios: He thought it could lead to the removal of Putin, the disappearance of Prigozhin or a violent civil war.
Instead, Prigozhin reportedly left the country, and Kremlin officials say they dropped criminal charges against him.
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“The gloves have come off” between Putin and the Wagner leader, ex-British official says
The brief revolt by mercenary fighters that emerged most of the way to Moscow and the war of words between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin represent a clear divide between the two, according to the analyst defense industry and former British Army officer Nicholas Drummond. .
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, says Russia will not prosecute the Wagner fighters who advanced on the capital.
Radchenko is highly skeptical of the apparent de-escalation deal, saying history has shown that Putin, Prigozhin and Lukashenko cannot be trusted.
“It’s a shadowboxing match and we’ll have to see who comes out on top.”
Sergey Markov, a Moscow-based political scientist who has previously advised Putin, told CBC News he thought there would be some sort of compromise.
Markov predicted that Putin might fire Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and top general Valery Gerasinmov to appease Prigozhin, who had previously been quite close to the Russian president.
Xoigu and Gerasinmov were not publicly seen or heard from as the attempted rebellion unfolded.
Earlier on Saturday, a tank with a Wagner Group flag with the word ‘Siberia’ written on its front in Russian was parked in front of the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don. (Associated Press)
Prigozhin, who was previously convicted of theft, ended up in Putin’s circle after rising through the ranks after being released from prison.
He started out running a hot dog stand, but then morphed into a government caterer and eventually a militia leader.
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Uprising may be ‘an omen’, says retired general
In recent months, Prigozhin unleashed increasingly angry diatribes against Russia’s top military officials, whom he accused of incompetence and lying to Putin about the reality of the battlefield in Ukraine.
On May 5, in a video released by his press service, Prigozhin stood in front of a row of bloody bodies shouting a blasphemous rant about how the Russian defense ministry was depriving its fighters of ammunition, and dying in great numbers as they fought to control Bakhmut.
“Those responsible would go to hell,” cried Prigozhin.
Two weeks later, Wagner declared that he controlled Bakhmut, but Prigozhin revealed online that the mercenary group had lost 20,000 fighters, half of whom were convicts recruited from Russian prisons.
When the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that mercenary fighters in Ukraine must sign contracts with the military by July 1, Prigozhin refused.
A worker removes a Wagner Group ad outside St. Petersburg on Saturday. (Anton Vaganov/Reuters)
Hours before launching what he called his “march for justice,” Prigozhin said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu lied about the justification for the invasion of Ukraine.
“What was the war for? The war needed Shoigu to receive a hero star,” he said in a video he posted on his social media channel.
“The Ministry of Defense is trying to mislead the public, mislead the president and tell a story that there was a crazy aggression by Ukraine, that — along with the entire NATO bloc — Ukraine was planning to attack us,” he said.
While Prigozhin has mostly avoided any direct criticism of Putin, launching a rebellion against top military leaders is an attack on his regime, according to retired British Army General Richard Barrons.
“It may be an omen,” Barrons said in an interview with Reuters. “The rift in the regime that sits around President Putin … is very real.”
