According to the media, US secret services knew about Prigozhin’s plans. Now the West is trying to understand what happened.
Since mid-June, US intelligence services had known about Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to launch a mutiny against Russia’s military leadership – just not exactly when it would start. The US media reports. The Biden administration had been briefed since Wednesday, but it only switched to moderate crisis mode over the weekend. Only Chief of Staff Mark Milley canceled a trip to the Middle East. He was in contact with Valeriy Zalushniy, Ukraine’s military chief, to discuss Ukraine’s counteroffensive procedures, including whether a full-scale attack on Crimea was now advisable.
Crisis Team at Camp David
Joe Biden didn’t let the family trip to the weekend retreat at Camp David deter him, where the president followed the course of events in Russia. A small crisis team was in place, and Biden analyzed the political and military fallout from the uprising over the phone with America’s closest allies – the heads of state and government of Britain, France and Germany. And also the consequences if the “nuclear case” fell into the hands of the coup plotters. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Antony Blinken was conferring with his colleagues from the G7 countries by telephone and also coordinating with top diplomats from Ukraine and Poland.