LAST UPDATE | 26 Jun 2023
RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR Putin today accused Ukraine and its Western allies of wanting Russians to “kill each other” during a revolt by mercenaries of the Wagner group, which stunned the country with an aborted march on Moscow over the weekend.
In his first address to the nation since the rebels pulled back, Putin said he had issued orders to avoid bloodshed, and granted amnesty to the Wagner fighters whose mutiny served up the greatest challenge yet to his two-decade rule.
“From the start of the events, on my orders steps were taken to avoid large-scale bloodshed,” Putin said in a televised address, thanking Russians for their “patriotism”.
“It was precisely this fratricide that Russia’s enemies wanted: both the neo-Nazis in Kyiv and their Western patrons, and all sorts of national traitors. They wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other,” Putin said.
Putin also thanked his security officials for their work during the armed rebellion in a meeting that included Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, a main target of the mutiny.
The leader of the Wagner mercenary group said today that his aborted rebellious march on Moscow over the weekend had shown up “very serious security problems” in Russia.
In an audio file released today, Yevgeny Prigozhin said the convoy stopped 200 kilometres (125 miles) short of Moscow and had “blocked all military infrastructure” including air bases along its path.
Prigozhin further said his fighters had the support of “happy” civilians in towns they went through as they advanced on Moscow.
“In Russian towns, civilians met us with Russian flags and the symbols of Wagner…They were all happy when we passed through,” he said.
He also claimed that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has proposed ways in which the mercenary group could continue operating.
“Lukashenko held out his hand and offered to find solutions for the continuation of the work of the Wagner private military company in a legal jurisdiction,” he said.
Prigozhin said that his aborted revolt was aimed at saving his embattled mercenary outfit and not at ousting the Russian authorities:
“We went to demonstrate our protest and not to overthrow power in the country”.
He did not reveal his location.
Wagner group mercenaries headed back to their base yesterday after Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to allow their leader to avoid treason charges and accept exile in neighbouring Belarus.
The agreement halted an extraordinary crisis – a private army led by Putin’s former close ally Yevgeny Prigozhin trying to storm Moscow – but analysts said Wagner’s revolt had exposed Putin’s rule as more fragile than previously thought.
Despite that initial agreement however, Russian media organisations Kommersant and Ria Novosti reported today that the charges against Prigozhin have not been dropped.
The headquarters of the Wagner group said today it was working in “normal mode.”
The statement from the office came as the fate of Wagner was uncertain after the rebellion and as Russia appeared to take a business-as-usual approach.
“Despite events that have taken place, the centre continues to work in normal mode in accordance to the law of the Russian Federation,” the office, based in Russia’s second city of Saint Petersburg, said.
It said Wagner has “worked for the future of Russia” and thanked its supporters.
Wagner’s chief Prigozhin has not been seen since Saturday, but the Kremlin said he will be sent to neighbouring Belarus after a Minsk-brokered deal to halt his rebellion.
Security measures were still in place in Moscow yesterday, though fewer police were visible, and passersby said they were unconcerned, despite Prigozhin’s exact whereabouts remaining unclear.
“Of course, I was shaken at the beginning,” Ludmila Shmeleva, 70, told AFP while walking at Moscow’s Red Square. “I was not expecting this.”
“We are fighting, and there is also an internal enemy who is stabbing you in the back, as President Putin said,” she said. “But we are walking around, relaxing, we don’t feel any danger.”
Prigozhin was last seen late on Saturday in an SUV leaving Rostov-on-Don, where his fighters had seized a military headquarters, to the cheers of some local people. Some shook his hand through the car window.
Trucks carrying armoured vehicles with fighters on them followed his car.
From assessing geolocated footage, Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said Wagner forces came as close as 330 kilometres from the Russian capital, while Prigozhin himself claimed that “in 24 hours we got 200 kilometres from Moscow”.
The mutiny was the culmination of his long-standing feud with the Russian military’s top brass over the conduct of the Russian operation in Ukraine.
Putin had denounced the revolt as treason on Saturday, vowing to punish the perpetrators. He accused them of pushing Russia to the brink of civil war.
Later the same day, however, he had accepted an agreement brokered by Belarus to avert Moscow’s most serious security crisis in decades.
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Joe Biden discussed the revolt yesterday, ahead of a NATO summit in Lithuania next month.
“The world must put pressure on Russia until international order is restored,” Zelenskyy said on Twitter, adding that he had again invoked the possibility of “long-range weapons” for Ukraine as it pursues a counter-offensive against Russian occupiers.
Russian state television broadcast footage this morning of defence minister Sergei Shoigu inspecting Russian troops, in his first public appearance since a failed mutiny by Wagner forces.
Shoigu – the target of fierce criticism by the mercenary group’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin – went to a command post for Russian forces in Ukraine and held a meeting there with the leader of one of the units, according to images shown by the broadcaster.
During the meeting, the minister highlighted “great efficiency in the detection and destruction” of Ukraine’s weapons systems and soldiers, the ministry of defence said in a press release.
The footage shows Shoigu listening to a report being presented on the area’s military situation, studying maps and taking a helicopter ride to inspect Russian positions.
Within hours of Prigozhin’s announcement that his forces would return to base to avoid “spilling Russian blood”, the Kremlin said Putin’s former ally would leave for Belarus.
Russia will drop the “armed rebellion” charges against Prigozhin and not prosecute Wagner troops, it added.
Ukraine revelled in the chaos, stepping up its counter-offensive against Russian forces, with analysts saying the deal had exposed weakness in the Russian president’s grip on power.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said he had negotiated the truce with Prigozhin. Moscow thanked him, but observers noted that an intervention by Lukashenko, usually seen as Putin’s junior partner, was itself an embarrassment.
Zelenskyy’s senior aide Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted that “Prigozhin humiliated Putin/the state and showed that there is no longer a monopoly on violence”.
But Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic credited Putin’s “strong reaction” with bringing about the abrupt de-escalation, state-run Russian news agency TASS said, citing an interview with Serbian television channel Pink.
“No one else alive today would have been able to stop it,” he was quoted as saying.
Russia, meanwhile, insisted the rebellion had no impact on its faltering Ukraine campaign, and said Sunday that it had repelled new offensive attacks by Ukrainian forces.
Ukrainian soldiers leaving the front line Sunday said the revolt had not noticeably affected fighting around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
“Most people, most military, understand very well that the circus from Russia is still here,” said Nazar, a 26-year-old bearded soldier, parked at a service station on a road leading out of the Bakhmut area.
Kyiv, however, said the unrest offered a “window of opportunity” for its long-awaited counter-offensive.
Meanwhile, the headquarters of the Wagner mercenary group has stated that it is working in “normal mode.”
“Despite events that have taken place, the centre continues to work in normal mode in accordance to the law of the Russian Federation,” the office, based in Russia’s second city of Saint Petersburg, said.
It said Wagner has “worked for the future of Russia” and thanked its supporters.
Wagner’s fighters – made up of volunteers and ex-security officers, but also thousands of convicts – were often thrown into the front of Russia’s advance in Ukraine.
The outfit also conducts several operations in the Middle East and Africa, largely seen as having Moscow’s blessing.
“The crisis of institutions and trust was not obvious to many in Russia and the West yesterday. Today, it is clear,” independent political analyst Konstantin Kalachev told AFP.
“Putin underestimated Prigozhin, just as he underestimated Zelenskyy before that. He could have stopped this with a phone call to Prigozhin but he did not.”
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said yesterday that Wagner’s short-lived uprising marked “a direct challenge to Putin’s authority” and “shows real cracks” in Russian state authority.
French President Emmanuel Macron also said the march on Moscow “shows the divisions that exist within the Russian camp, and the fragility of both its military and its auxiliary forces”.
Foreign Minister Qin Gang of China, which has maintained close ties with Putin since the Ukraine operation was launched, met Russia’s deputy foreign minister Andrey Rudenko in Beijing yesterday.
Afterwards the Chinese foreign ministry called the mercenary revolt an “internal affair” for Russia and expressed support for Putin’s government.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi gave “his full support” to Vladimir Putin during a telephone call, the Kremlin announced in a statement today.
“The Iranian president has expressed his full support for the Russian leadership in connection with the June 24 events,” the Kremlin said in an announcement.
After a phone call between Putin and Raisi, the Iranian president’s political deputy, Mohammad Jamshidi, quoted the Iranian president in a tweet, saying “the Islamic Republic of Iran supports Russian sovereignty.”
According to the Iranian official, “President Putin explained the events related to the failed mutiny and insisted that such incidents cannot affect Russian sovereignty.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanani, reiterated on Monday that Iran “does not support any side in the war in Ukraine”, while the United States accuses Tehran of supplying drones to Moscow and of helping to build a factory to manufacture them, which Tehran denies.
Putin also received in the morning “support” from the emir of Qatar, according to another press release from the Russian presidency.
- AFP 2023
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