Vladimir Putin spent a hectic couple of days in Moscow. The Wagner Group, the paramilitary organization that until Friday responded to him, decided to rebel. With the armed motorcades headed for Moscow, the city began to prepare for a potential confrontation, protecting important buildings and militarizing the city. “We will destroy anyone who stands in our way,” said Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the group.
The conflict stretched into the night of Saturday, June 24, when the two sides reached an agreement thanks to the intervention of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The agreement included changes in the country’s military leadership, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (Prigozhin’s enemy) and Army Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov.
The Kremlin decided not to advance its criminal case against the head of the Wagner Group, who moved to Lukashenko’s territory. “You ask me what will happen to Prigozhin. The criminal case against him will be withdrawn, and he will go to Belarus. We have always respected his heroic deeds at the front,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
WATCH: "Russia [is] having to defend Moscow ... against mercenaries of its own making," Sec. Blinken says.@SecBlinken: The Wagner Group rose "a direct challenge to Putin’s authority. ... We've seen more cracks emerge in the Russian façade." pic.twitter.com/g00rqwmoWi
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) June 25, 2023
Blinken’s response
Antony Blinken made it clear from the outset that both the United States and the G7 countries were closely following developments in Russia. However, he spoke more freely on the subject during several interviews he gave over the weekend.
One of them was with CBS’s “Face the Nation,” where he assured that “this is an unfolding story.” “We haven’t seen the last act. We are watching it very closely,” he added, clarifying that the State Department expects more chapters in the series between Putin and the Wagner Group.
“The fact that this is, at the least, an added distraction for — for Putin, and for Russia, I think is to the advantage of Ukraine. ... this just creates another problem for Putin,” he analyzed in dialogue with NBC’s “Meet the Press.” According to him, the Prigozhin uprising is just the latest chapter in a book of failure that Putin has written for himself and for Russia”, he said.
“Sixteen months ago, Russian forces were on the doorstep of Kyiv in Ukraine, thinking they’d take the city in a matter of days, thinking they would erase Ukraine from the map as an independent country. Now, over this weekend, they’ve had to defend Moscow, Russia’s capital, against mercenaries of Putin’s own making,” added the Secretary of State, who recently visited China to try to ease diplomatic tensions with the United States.
Finally, he latched on to one of the main points raised by the head of the Wagner Group, who questioned the war with Ukraine from a Russian perspective. Prigozhin had stated that the conflict had been a necessity of “the oligarchs” and that Moscow is covering up the real number of casualties.
“Prigozhin himself, in this entire incident, has raised profound questions about the very premises for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in the first place,” Blinken stated.
