Washington
CNN
—
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that the brief and chaotic insurgency in Russia led by the Wagner paramilitary group shows “cracks” in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s role as the country’s leader.
“This is just an added chapter to a very, very bad book that Putin has written for Russia. But what’s so amazing is that it’s internal,” Blinken told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” and described the situation as “extraordinary”.
“The fact that you have someone from within directly questioning Putin’s authority, directly questioning the premises on which he launched this aggression against Ukraine. That, in itself, is a very, very powerful thing. It adds cracks. Where they go, when they get there, it’s too soon to tell, but it clearly raises new questions that Putin has to deal with,” he said.
The nation’s top diplomat’s comments underscore the short-lived intensity of a crisis that began when Yevegeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, marched his fighters into Moscow, seizing control of military installations Russians along the way.
Prigozhin on Friday openly accused the Russian army of attacking a Wagner camp and killing a “large number” of his men. For months, he had criticized Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the country’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, whom he blames for Moscow’s faltering invasion of Ukraine.
The Kremlin responded to the Wagner Group’s show of force by deploying heavily armed troops on the streets of Moscow and warning residents to stay indoors.
By late Saturday, the Kremlin said a deal had been reached to end the insurgency, with Prigozhin heading to neighboring Belarus and Wagner’s fighters calling off their march.
American intelligence had painted a grim picture, with the expectation that Prigozhin’s march on Moscow would meet much more resistance and be “much bloodier than it was,” according to one American official.
There was surprise that Russia’s professional army did not do a better job of confronting Wagner’s troops as they moved into Rostov and toward Moscow, the official said. This surprise was compounded by the rapidity of the agreement that was reached to stop the insurrection.
“We assessed that it would be much more violent and bloody,” the official told CNN.
The remarkable challenge to Russian leadership, albeit brief, threatened to plunge the country into crisis and destabilize it already stumbling the war effort in Ukraine.
“We don’t know what effect this will have, but it clearly shows the world once again the difference between what’s happening in Ukraine and what’s happening in Russia,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, told Bash in an interview separate in Bash. “State of the Union”.
Retired general to Prigozhin: “Be careful with open windows”
Although tensions have eased, Putin may be more exposed than he has been in the past 23 years after the attempted coup, according to former CIA director David Petraeus.
“The government has been shaken. Putin has been personally shaken. That makes him more vulnerable, possibly, than he has been at any time in his two decades of governing the Russian Federation,” Petraeus said in a separate appearance on “State of the Union.”
Petraeus said the rebellion would add to existing doubts about the invasion of Ukraine, which the retired US army general described as a “catastrophic mistake, a terrible mistake on Putin’s part”.
President Joe Biden discussed continued U.S. support for Ukraine with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday, a White House official said.
Blinken said Sunday that it was “too early” to determine how the saga will end and that the fate of Russia’s leadership should be left to its citizens.
“But we can say this: first of all, what we have seen is extraordinary. And I think you’ve seen cracks emerge that weren’t there before,” he said.
This story has been updated with additional details.
