Ukraine celebrates with some relief the conflict between the head of the Wagner mercenary company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and those in power in the Kremlin. The Kiev government sees this not only as a sign of internal weakness, but also as a clash that will have consequences for the invasion of Ukrainian territory. “Russia’s weakness is obvious. Big Weakness. And the longer Russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain and troubles it will have for itself,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday.
“Russia has long used propaganda to cover up its weakness and the stupidity of its government. And now there is so much chaos that no lie can hide it,” the president added via his social network channel Telegram. Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba appealed to those who sided with Moscow. “Those who said Russia was too strong to lose: look now,” he tweeted. “It is time to abandon false neutrality and fear of escalation; Give Ukraine all the weapons it needs. Forget friendship or business with Russia. It’s time to put an end to evil,” added the head of Ukrainian diplomacy.
Tensions inside Russia have risen at a time when the Kiev army is focused on the counter-offensive it launched three weeks ago to retake Russian-held territories. It also coincides with the explosive announcement by the controversial Prigozhin that he would withdraw his men from the front as of June 1st. Ukrainian authorities and analysts now understand that events on the other side of the border are of no use to the troop movements from the Kremlin, which occupy the neighboring country and face the onslaught of Ukrainian forces. The war is definitely going on and three people died this Saturday in Kiev in the latest Russian bombing of the capital.
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“Today, Ukraine is a few steps closer to complete victory over Russia and the complete return of its territories, including Crimea,” said Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to the interior ministry, in a comment published on his social networks. . “This is a rebellion, not against war criminals Shoigu and Gerasimov (heads of the Russian Defense Ministry), but against Putin himself, whose place Prigozhin has always wanted to take in order to create his own regime in Russia,” he added.
From Zelenskyy’s entourage, they are also closely following the development of the Russian crisis. “Everything has just begun in Russia,” said Mikhailo Podoliak, the president’s main adviser, who stressed on his social media that this is important for the two parties, the Kremlin and Yevgeny Prigozhin, a billionaire and controversial businessman who was once Putin’s friend. not possible to come together. save from defeat For Andri Yermak, head of the presidential office, “a Russian civil war was the only plausible outcome of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.” “History shows us that all dictators eventually collapse under the weight of their contradictions and arrogance,” he said on Twitter.
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The Prigozhin uprising suggests that Moscow will be forced to focus more on its own territory and less on Ukraine, which it continues to invade. And anything that detracts from the goal the Russian president has set for his full-scale invasion is almost a blessing in the midst of war. The fact that disagreements between Prigozhin, Putin and the Russian Defense Ministry have exploded is not only an internal Russian conflict, because its direct consequences in Ukraine in the current war situation are undisputed, as the Kiev authorities admit.
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“A win-win scenario” for Ukraine
In a country like Russia, where dissent and opposition are dangerous, Prigozhin sheds light on underlying doubts about the military campaign in Ukraine and internal differences over Putin’s imperialist plans, Oleksandr Slyvchuk, coordinator of the Spain-Latin America cooperation program at the Kiev Transatlantic dialogue center.
This analyst believes the leader of the mercenaries – who frequently videotapes and broadcasts challenging messages from areas of Ukraine where his men are stationed – appears as a figure more aware of reality than the upper echelons of power in the Kremlin. “Prigozhin is more connected to ordinary people, to the soldiers in the trenches,” he comments, given “the corrupt structure” of the commanders who are unable to analyze the “real situation on the battlefield.”
“An internal civil war erupting in Russia” represents a “favorable scenario” for Ukraine, as it will force Moscow to “focus on its problems and not so much on the invasion of its neighbors,” says this analyst.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian social networks are celebrating events in the neighboring country. Jokes, reactions and videos of Wagner’s mercenaries taking a stand on the street and even going into a fast food restaurant to order a full hamburger.
Slyvchuk believes that it is currently not easy to say how the conflict might develop and whether it might lead to Putin’s overthrow, but he understands that this is a serious open crisis with an uncertain outcome. “I don’t believe in a victory for Prigozhin because Russia is a huge force and he looks more like a rebel. It is the face of many soldiers in the Russian Armed Forces. The mere fact that some of them do not oppose and resist Prigozhin shows that they do not comply with the orders of the Russian Ministry of Defense,” comments the coordinator of the Spain-Latin America cooperation program at the Transatlantic Dialogue Center. In his opinion, this is substantiated by a number of videos “in which it can be seen that they do not touch Wagner’s vehicles, although this should be their duty.”
The fact that Wagner’s men were bombed shows that “Russia has lost control of its internal situation” and has crossed some “red lines”, although, he concludes, one cannot yet explicitly speak of a civil war. However, adviser Gerashenko believes that this attack was staged by the businessman himself and that the Russian authorities decided to eliminate him directly and not give him a chance to order an uprising like the current one. “I am convinced that this provocation was organized by Prigozhin himself, because there was no point in Shoigu and Gerasimov attacking one of the dozen military camps of the Wagner military group,” says the adviser to the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine.
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