On this Sunday morning, with the sun already faintly warm in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, the streets were almost empty of tanks and uniformed men. Wagner’s masked mercenaries, who took control of the city’s official buildings on Saturday, withdrew overnight, partly to public applause. Also, its leader, obscure businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, sponsor of the rebellion against the military leadership that was keeping Russia’s security apparatus in check and posing the Kremlin’s greatest challenge in decades, left Rostov jubilantly like a celebrity, while the armored column cheered him in advance headed for the capital, Moscow, turned back to avoid what he described as “Russian bloodshed.”
But his departure, which according to an agreement with the Kremlin and the mediation of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is rumored to be going to Belarus to put an end to his attempted military coup, does not prevent the emergence of a Russia other than Just One from Rising. A day before his rebellion. The challenge of the foul-mouthed Prigozhin, who is currently missing and has always remained loyal to Putin and Putin alone, has seriously challenged the Russian president’s image as a strongman. And it has revealed the cracks in a state engulfed in power struggles, exhausted by the war in Ukraine, angry at the elites, plagued by inflation and whose economy has been all but crippled by Western sanctions and the exodus of foreign capital.
The immediate consequence, a Western intelligence source warns, is a renewed campaign of massive attacks on Ukraine to demonstrate violence. This is what the Russian President said in an interview this Sunday that was broadcast by the state broadcaster Rossiya but recorded a few days before the coup. “We are confident and, of course, capable of implementing all the plans and tasks ahead of us,” Putin told journalist Pavel Sarubin. “This also applies to national defence, it applies to special military operations, it applies to the economy as a whole and its individual areas.”
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Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, confirmed the deal with Prigozhin. “There was a higher goal: avoiding bloodshed, avoiding internal confrontations and unpredictable advisory confrontations,” Peskow argued Saturday night. “Lukashenko’s mediation efforts were implemented in the name of these goals. And President Putin made the appropriate decision,” added the Russian spokesman.
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The Kremlin has vowed to drop charges of rebellion against Prigozhin – which carries a prison sentence of between 12 and 20 years – and has offered him unspecified “security guarantees” over the Belarusian. “The exact guarantee that Prigozhin will be able to travel to Belarus is the word of the Russian President,” said Peskov. Meanwhile, Prigozhin, who was finding it very difficult to launch his rebellion without the lack of support from the elites, pledged on Saturday night that he had achieved the goal of his “march for justice” against the Russian defense minister. Sergei Shoigu, with whom he has had a rivalry for years. The person in charge of defense had been activated in recent months in order to manage to take over the Wagner company as regular armed forces under his command. However, nothing has come out about a possible change in leadership or the workings of the defense. Any reorganization, Peskov stressed, is “in accordance with the constitution, the exclusive prerogative and jurisdiction of the Commander-in-Chief.”
The Kremlin also promised that the Wagner mercenaries involved in the uprising would not face any consequences because of their “services at the front”. Those who didn’t join the uprising can sign contracts with the Defense Ministry, according to Peskov. What happened and the Prigozhin agreement means, for the time being, the dissolution of the Wagner company and its integration into the army, as Minister Shoigu has wanted for a long time.
However, several analysts point out that what happens to the mercenary company, which is present as the unofficial armed wing of the Kremlin in Syria, the Central African Republic, Libya or Mali, could have global ramifications. Western intelligence sources point out that it is not clear whether the integration mandate within the army also includes mercenaries abroad. And this could be a point of the agreement with Prigozhin, who, according to US intelligence services quoted by various media, had been preparing military action since Wednesday, but it was brought about on Friday afternoon.
normality on the streets
Russian cities and regions on Sunday began lifting restrictions imposed on Saturday. And although Moscow maintains the “anti-terrorist operation” regime and considers this Monday a day off, state television channels are broadcasting their usual programs. Underlying this semblance of relative normality is a sense that the impunity afforded to Prigozhin’s enormous defiance could have repercussions for the Putin regime. Also in the way it is seen from abroad, not only in the west but also by allies like China or India.
The deal with Prigozhin “is a short-term fix, not a long-term fix,” says the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, which highlights that the Kremlin now faces a “deeply unstable equilibrium.” .” “The Prigozhin uprising exposed serious weaknesses in the Kremlin and the Russian Defense Ministry,” notes ISW in a report.
Prigozhin’s rebellion, Lukashenko’s mediation to halt the military advance – which can be humiliating for Putin, especially as he has promised certain benefits to the Belarusian, who has been heavily dependent on the Kremlin of late – challenges the traditional image of Putin as a “guarantor of stability” on the question of Russia. But it does not let the mercenary boss down either, who has won the support of a relevant part of the citizenry with his criticism of the corruption in the army, the bureaucracy and his “March for Justice”. , could now hardly lead to the contractor company that was instrumental in the offensive against Ukraine.
Russia, via various sources, was quick to emphasize that Wagner’s armed insurgency did not affect Kremlin forces stationed in Ukraine, but that the mutiny highlighted the lack of reserves in the rear areas. Also that Russia relies on inexperienced recruits to defend its borders, as shown when Wagner’s convoys passed: those who protected them surrendered without offering any resistance. Mikhailo Podoliak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who assured on Saturday that he believes the crisis would one way or another lead to the end of the current power structure in Russia, believes what happened, even if a An end to the rebellion will have consequences such as the “destruction” of Wagner’s boss. “This order will be carried out for sure,” Podoliak said on social media.
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