A short-lived uprising by a Russian mercenary rebel commander ended up with his troops beat a retreat, but the unique challenge of President Vladimir PutinA two-decade hold on power could have long-term consequences for his rule and his war in Ukraine.
as United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken told “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning, the current situation in Russia is an “unfolding story.”
“We haven’t seen the final act yet,” Blinken said. “We’re watching it carefully and carefully, but take a step back for a second and put it in context.”
On Sunday morning, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, is set to depart for Belarus under a deal brokered by the Kremlin. As part of the deal, Wagner’s troops would be pardoned and the criminal charges against Prigozhin would be dropped.
Blinken said on “Face the Nation” that he could not get into Prigozhin’s current whereabouts, but said it was something they were “tracking” through intelligence.
/ AP
Wagner’s troops were seen on Sunday leaving Rostov, a major Russian military post they had taken.
By Sunday afternoon, the troops had left the capital, and people were thronging the streets and flocking to the cafes. Traffic has returned to normal and roadblocks and checkpoints have been removed, but Red Square remains close to visitors. On the highways leading to Moscow, crews are repairing roads that were destroyed just hours ago due to panic.
In a televised speech on Saturday, Putin called for unity and accused Prigozhin of treason, without mentioning him by name.
Putin’s image as a strong leader has been tarnished by war in Ukraine, which lasted for 16 months and claimed a large number of Russian troops. Saturday’s march on Moscow by forces under the command of his former protégé, Prigozhin, exposed further weaknesses, analysts said.
It also meant that some of the best forces fighting for Russia in Ukraine were pulled from the battlefield: Prigozhin’s own Wagner troops and the Chechens sent to suppress them.
They then advanced towards Moscow almost unhindered. Russian media reported that they downed several helicopters and a military communications plane. The Defense Ministry did not comment.
They were only stopped by an agreement to send Prigozhin to neighboring Belarus, which supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Charges against him of raising an armed rebellion will be dropped, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, and Prigozhin has ordered his troops back to their field camps.
The government also said it would not prosecute Wagner fighters who participated, while those who did not were offered contracts by the Ministry of Defense.
Although Putin had earlier promised to punish those behind the armed uprising, Peskov defended the change, saying Putin’s “highest goal” was to “prevent bloodshed and internal strife.” confrontation with unpredictable consequences.”
That amnesty contrasts with the fines and prison sentences Russian authorities have imposed on thousands of people who have criticized the war, albeit obliquely.
And while it ended the immediate crisis, it may be at work in the longer term, analysts and observers say.
“For a dictatorship founded on the idea of unchallenged power, this is a serious humiliation, and it is difficult to see the genie of doubt forced back into the bottle,” said Phillips O’Brien, a professor in the strategic study of the University. in St. Andrews in Scotland. “So, if Prigozhin may have lost in the short term, Putin is likely to be the long-term loser.”
Blinken noted on “Meet the Press” that the challenge to Putin comes from within.
“I think we’re seeing a lot of cracks appear on the Russian front,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have all kinds of new questions that Putin will have to address in the coming weeks and months.”
Prigozhin, who sent a series of audio and video updates during his uprising, has been silent since the Kremlin announced the deal.
It is not clear if he is still in Belarus or if any of his Wagner troops will follow him.
In response to questions from The Associated Press, Prigozhin’s press office replied that he could not answer immediately but “will answer questions when he gets a normal connection.”
Video taken by The Associated Press in Rostov-on-Don shows people cheering Wagner’s troops as they leave. Others ran to shake hands with Prigozhin, who was in an SUV.
The regional governor later said that all troops had left the city. Russian news agencies also reported that authorities in Lipetsk confirmed that Wagner’s forces had left the region, sitting on the road to Moscow from Rostov.
Moscow prepared for the arrival of Wagner’s forces by establishing checkpoints with armored vehicles and troops in the southern part of the city. About 3,000 Chechen soldiers were pulled from fighting in Ukraine and rushed there on Saturday, Chechnya’s state television reported. Russian troops armed with machine guns set up checkpoints in the southern part of Moscow. Crews dug up sections of highways to slow the march.
Anchors on state-controlled television stations cast the deal ending the crisis as a show of Putin’s wisdom and aired footage of Wagner’s troops retreating from Rostov-on-Don to the relief of locals which residents fear a bloody battle for control of the city.
People there interviewed by Channel 1 praised Putin’s role.
But the US-based Institute for the Study of War warns that “the Kremlin now faces a deeply unstable balance.”
The “deal is a short-term fix, not a long-term solution,” wrote the institute, which has traced the war in Ukraine from the beginning.
Prigozhin demanded the dismissal of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whom Prigozhin had long criticized in terms of his handling of the war in Ukraine.
The US had intelligence that Prigozhin had been building up his forces near the Russian border for some time. That contradicts Prigozhin’s claim that his rebellion was in response to the attack on his camps in Ukraine last Friday by the Russian military.
In announcing the rebellion, Prigozhin accused Russian forces of targeting the Wagner camps in Ukraine with rockets, helicopter gunships and artillery. He alleged that Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, ordered the attacks after a meeting with Shoigu where they decided to destroy the military contractor.
The Defense Ministry denied the attack on the camps.
Congressional leaders were briefed on the Wagner construction early last week, a person familiar with the matter said. The man was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The US intelligence briefing was first reported by CNN.
A possible motivation for Prigozhin’s rebellion was the request of the Russian Defense Ministry, supported by Putin, that private companies sign contracts with it by July 1. Prigozhin refused to do so.
Ukrainians hope that the fighting with Russia will create opportunities for their army to recapture territory seized by Russian forces.
“These events are very comforting to the Ukrainian government and military,” said Ben Barry, senior fellow on land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Wagner’s troops played a key role in the war in Ukraine, capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut, a place where the bloodiest and longest battles took place.
The Kremlin’s offer of amnesty to Prigozhin was negotiated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, which may have increased his stature in his relationship with Putin.
The 62-year-old Prigozhin, an ex-convict, has long-standing ties to Putin and has won lucrative Kremlin catering contracts that have earned him the nickname “Putin’s chef.”
Wagner has sent military contractors to Libya, Syria and several African countries, as well as Ukraine.
