Vladimir Putin broke his promise made on Saturday to punish Wagner’s rebels. In a message addressed to the nation this Monday, the Russian President pledged that the safety of the mercenaries would be guaranteed. “Today they have the option to continue serving Russia under a contract with the Ministry of Defense or other law enforcement agencies, or to return to their families and friends. Anyone who wants can go to Belarus. “The promise I made will be fulfilled,” the president assured in a message citing the popularity these men have gained by invading Ukraine.
“The vast majority of the fighters and commanders of the Wagner Group are also Russian patriots, loyal to their people and the state. They showed it with their courage on the battlefield and liberated Donbas and Novorossiya,” Putin added. The president also thanked them for making “the only right decision: They didn’t support fratricidal bloodshed, they stopped at the last line.”
Putin’s intervention in the weekend’s crisis was a credit to himself. “From the beginning of events, measures were taken on my direct orders to prevent major bloodshed,” said the Russian leader, who was at least publicly confident that “a armed uprising would have been crushed”, although the Russians were armed Forces are now concentrated in Ukraine.
“It has been shown that there is the supreme unity of society, the executive and the legislature at all levels,” added the Kremlin chief in a speech that also sought to reinforce the Kremlin’s propaganda: The whole country stay united President.
Putin never mentioned Wagner’s boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin. “The organizers of the rebellion betrayed their country and their people and also betrayed those involved in this crime. “They lied to them, drove them to their deaths under fire to shoot themselves,” was the only mention made by the mercenary leadership, before stressing that the Russian soldiers “finally realized their mistake.”
Prigozhin on Monday gave the first signs of life since the uprising he led in Russia on Saturday. The businessman has released an audio recording in which he indicates that his paramilitary group’s intention was not “to overthrow the government, but to protest” and claims to have the support of virtually all of his troops. In this recording, Prigozhin has influenced the military split by accusing the Russian army of being jealous of his achievements and killing their own. “We were best prepared, we fulfilled all orders (…) Due to intrigues and wrong decisions, Wagner was supposed to cease to exist on July 1, 2023,” Prigozhin lamented, referring to the decree giving up all troops under the Regular Army umbrella. The statements came hours after the official Russian press published that, contrary to what appeared to be an agreement, the trial against Prigozhin was not completed on Saturday after the failed uprising ended and the charges against him therefore remain pending for violence.
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The purpose of the protest, according to Prigozhin’s report, was “to bring to justice those who made mistakes.” The leader of the mercenaries elaborated on the argument of the protest against Moscow: “Although we did not commit aggression, we were attacked with rockets and then the helicopters flew past us.” About 30 people died, Wagner fighters.” Prigozhin admitted that some pilots of the Russian armed forces were killed in the fighting.
Wagner’s boss did not mention the supposed pact that ended Wagner’s putsch, the main condition of which appears not to have been met. The agreement stipulated that the columns of paramilitary soldiers and armored vehicles had to stop en route to Moscow and return to their bases. In return, the Russian government promised to guarantee the immunity of Prigozhin and his men. However, the three pro-government agencies TASS, RIA and Interfax, as well as the country’s most important newspaper, Kommersant, assured this Monday that the proceedings against the Wagner leader for the mutiny had not yet been concluded. The charges he faces could carry a prison sentence of 12 to 20 years.
Brokered by Belarusian President and Vladimir Putin’s key ally in Ukraine, Alexander Lukashenko, the agreement stipulated that Prigozhin would leave the country to settle in Belarus. As soon as this condition was met, the treason proceedings opened against Wagner’s leader would be dropped. However, according to the official press, the FSB, the Russian intelligence successor to the Soviet KGB, is continuing its investigation. “The criminal case against Prigozhin has not been filed,” official agency TASS said, citing a prosecutor’s source. “The investigation is still ongoing,” he added.
Wagner’s uprising marked a before and after in Russia. The political earthquake caused by the head of the mercenary company this weekend has pushed Vladimir Putin himself into the middle of the war. Neither on the front lines nor on Russian propaganda sets do they understand the – possibly temporary – pardon for who was known as Putin’s boss, and his great rival, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, has only dared to appear publicly again three times. Days after Wagner took up arms against him.
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The alleged pardon for Prigozhin and his supporters has caused outrage among the most pro-Kremlin media. On the main public television channel Rossiya 1 this Sunday, host Dmitry Kiselyov stressed that “treason during wartime is a serious crime,” while an influential deputy and member of the State Duma Defense Committee, General Andrei Guruliov, went even further. “Today, beyond what can be said, only a bullet in the forehead is the salvation of Prigozhin and Utkin [el primer comandante de Wagner]“.
Putin now faces the monster his army created years ago to intervene in Syria and Donbass, without acknowledging that the Kremlin was behind these operations. Mercenary companies are forbidden by law in Russia, but since 2014 Moscow has turned a blind eye to Wagner. Now his deputies are trying to come full circle and punish this recruit of fortune-seekers without weakening the Ukrainian front.
“Russia needs a law regulating mercenary companies,” another military deputy, General Andrei Kartapolov, said on Sunday. The politician announced that Parliament would consider a bill that would allow control of the management of these companies without banning them because they were necessary for the invasion. “Our country will never be the same again. “The Wagnerian column did not move on the asphalt, it moved through hearts and split society in half,” commander Alexander Khodakovsky, one of the leaders of the Donbas separatists, wrote in his personal profile in 2014.
“Everything hung by a very fine thread,” added the soldier. “Those holding the front were stabbed in the back. Those whose lives depend on maintaining the front saw their darkest hours yesterday,” added Khodakovsky, stressing that Prigozhin’s populism left a very deep impression on Russians who are suspicious of Putin and his clique: “Millions of people will never be able to look.” in the eyes without condemning those who applauded when they saw the crash of the helicopters shot down by our fighters.
Crowds of Russians chant at Wagner’s military during their retreat from Rostov-on-Don on June 24. STRINGER (Portal)
tranquility in the population
But far away from the conspiracies behind the Kremlin walls, an apparent normality has returned to the streets. Checkpoints in the Russian capital have been lifted and people have returned to work this Monday as if nothing had happened. The Russian Federal Security Service [FSB] “Repeal the anti-terrorist alert regime decreed in Moscow at 9:00 am on June 26,” the Russian spy agency announced. The authorities of the Voronezh region made the same decision just two days after Wagner’s columns there shot down the helicopters trying to prevent their advance towards Moscow.
“The situation is calm,” says Andrei, the driver who brings this newspaper to St. Petersburg from the border town of Ivangorod. On Sunday afternoon there was calm on the border with Estonia. The only queue at customs formed at the border crossing to Russia. It consisted of dozens of citizens who had entered the European Union over the weekend for sightseeing and shopping and who spent the last hours of Sunday in a hurry. It only took a few minutes to cross the Iron Curtain.
In the capital Moscow, they had already lifted the checkpoints on Monday morning. While on Saturday “soldiers with long guns were on the roads leading into town,” as a European expatriate who was heading to his country home with his family to avoid trouble, told this newspaper, the armed forces shone on this one Monday even in train stations due to her absence. Neither on the main square in St. Petersburg, nor on the square of the three stations in Moscow, the well-known Komsomolskaya Square, there was a single military patrol. Just the constant policing that citizens have become accustomed to in recent years of Putinism.
Many acquaintances have preferred to work from home, although everyone agrees that “everything is quiet now.” The mayor of Moscow decreed on Saturday that Monday was a public holiday. Despite this, the usual crowds swept through the huge Moscow subway early in the morning. Many of them returned from their dachas – typical Russian country houses – after a weekend of waiting for the news. “I’m staying at home. I was worried about the conflicting information that came in, I didn’t understand anything and I didn’t know what could happen next,” Lina, who recently came to Moscow from Siberia to look for work, told this newspaper. “It may be dangerous, but it’s not possible for me to leave.”
Moscow’s top priority now is to reassure its citizens. The Defense Ministry on Monday released video of Sergei Shoigu’s alleged visit to an outpost of the western group of his forces in the invasion of Ukraine. No soldiers can be seen in the pictures and only four officers accompany the minister on his tour of the facilities. In addition, the defense does not indicate the day on which this visit took place.
Some well-known Russian pro-war bloggers claimed the video was taken before Wagner’s uprising. Telegram channel Rybard has revealed that its sources at headquarters and at the front admit that Shoigu traveled to the place before Prigozhin took Rostov-on-Don, although he admits that it is “impossible to refute this theory ‘ because ‘the file has been tampered with’. so tomorrow – Monday – at six o’clock, there are no previous records”. For his part, war correspondent Boris Roshin, through his sources, states that the picture was taken on Friday, June 23.
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