by Riccardo Ianello
Suddenly, after sixteen months, it is no longer the battlefield on Ukrainian soil that is making the headlines, but what is happening in Russia with Kiev, which remains on the window for the time being and, like the rest of the world, wonders about the interrupted march on Fly . Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a very strong statement (“Everything, even the devil, is better than Putin, even his Frankenstein”). According to the Ukrainian authorities, Prigozhin’s putsch represented “a window of opportunity” for the invaded country. In the afternoon there was also good news from the front: while the Wagner advanced undisturbed, the Ukrainian army had managed to wrest from Moscow several areas in the Donbass occupied in 2014. Kiev reacted with a mixture of astonishment, hope and a sense of revenge for the deteriorating situation in Russia. “We are only at the beginning,” tweeted Mykhailo Podoliak, spokesman for Zelenskyy, adding that “the split among Russian elites is too obvious. Accepting it and pretending it’s all settled won’t work.” A post to the president that slammed Telegram: “Whoever sends columns of soldiers to destroy lives in another country is destroying himself and cannot prevent his own troops from fleeing and betraying when life resists.”
Then Prigozhin’s unexpected turn. And so, in the end, almost nothing will change in this area. The Ukrainian counter-offensive, which should have been accelerated in view of the internal Russian difficulties, will continue according to the old plans. “Today the world saw that Russia’s leaders control nothing. Nothing at all. Complete chaos. Complete absence of predictability,” President Zelenskyy wrote in a Twitter post. “The world should not be afraid. We know what protects us. Our unit,” Zelenskyy added, according to which “Ukraine will certainly be able to protect Europe from any Russian force, no matter who commands it.”