2023-06-25 15:13:40
The last images of Evgueni Prigozhin after suspending his rebellion against the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense are that of an SUV. He is inside you. In Rostov. He greets. Smile. Squeeze hands. He allows himself to be loved by dozens of civilians from this city near Ukraine who are fighting to take selfies with the man who for more than twelve hours has put the Government of Vladimir Putin in check. He leaves. He invaded Rostov with his tanks and mercenaries at dawn on Saturday and vacated it after midnight this Sunday as if it were a party. His whereabouts were unknown this afternoon and that further fuels the expectation of knowing when he will fulfill the pact reached with the Kremlin to go into exile in Belarus in exchange for avoiding prosecution for treason.
Most likely, the mercenary leader is now with his troops on the other side of the border, where they have their headquarters and continue to defend the occupied positions against the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army. The paramilitaries have already left all the enclaves that they occupied in Russia this Saturday (Rostov, Voronezh and Lipetsk) within that strange operation mounted by Prigozhin that has ended in a surprising way. The first impression is that the oligarch once a friend of Vladimir Putin, who had Russia in his hands and the quasi-status of a military hero at the head of a company of mercenaries, has lost. He is on his way to exile.
However, with as little data as there is right now on his tussle with Putin, it is hard to assume that he has been beaten. Last night he left cheering. He has revealed to international opinion the weakness of the current Russian cabinet. In fact, he was able to occupy Rostov and advance hundreds of kilometers until he was two hundred kilometers from Moscow without the regular army doing anything to stop him and with the government mired in a kind of blockade. The Kremlin says today that the president did not leave his office at any time, in the face of the quite credible theory spread on Saturday that he had gone to Saint Petersburg. It is certain that his plane made that journey, but there is no probative image that Putin remained in the Kremlin after the morning message to the nation in which he called his former friend a “traitor.” As a veteran journalist suggested, it would have been necessary to enter the government headquarters and take a look to verify it. And he didn’t seem feasible in a hermetically protected Kremlin.
Prigozhin is greeted by the Rostov residents as he leaves the city. Reuters
Some sources point out that the agreement with Prigozhin to desist from his revolt, reached with the mediation of Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukanshenko, implies a purge in the Defense Ministry, starting with his own minister. Sergei Soigú is his archenemy. Wagner’s leader has accused him for months of the senseless death of thousands of Russian fighters at the front due to poor war management. And even to bombard his own mercenaries.
Avoid “bloodshed”
The Kremlin has not wanted to confirm or deny this possibility. His spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, assured this morning that these terms “could hardly be discussed during the contacts” between Prigozhin and Lukashenko, since “they are within the prerogative and exclusive competence of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief”; that is, Vladimir Putin. However, he has not exhaustively rejected that changes can be made in the ministry either. According to Peskov, the only objectives that made Prigozhin desist were to “avoid bloodshed, avoid internal confrontation and avoid clashes with unpredictable results.” The spokesman has also insinuated that many of his men (Wagner would enlist between 25,000 and 50,000) decided not to accompany him on his march to the capital, in which some 5,000 were able to participate. It must be specified, however, that Prigozhin left strong checkpoints in the rear, some in the occupied towns and others on the Ukrainian front.
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Putin appeared early this afternoon on state television, where he explained that the Executive’s top priority is to continue with the “special military operation in Ukraine.” He has been sure that “all the plans and tasks related” to the invasion already planned will continue without changes and announced that he will participate in the regular meeting of the Security Council in Moscow next week.
A child says goodbye to a paramilitary. AFP
What seems increasingly clear is that the head of the Wagner Group did not act out of a sudden impulse of anger and that they have been organizing their movement for some time. The main American newspapers collect in their edition this Sunday that the US Intelligence Agency had known for days that Prigozhin was planning an “armed action” against the Russian Defense leadership. The CIA informed the White House (some sources cite that it did so on Wednesday), the Defense Department and congressional leaders so that they would be prepared. However, they did not make it public for fear that Moscow would take it as a maneuver by Washington aimed at encouraging a coup.
According to this information, in the last two weeks “there were enough signs to be able to tell the leaders that something was happening”, which caused “great concern” in the Joe Biden Administration and the intelligence services. The strategists dealt with what kind of scenarios were possible in the event of a major destabilization: whether Putin would manage to stay in power or how control over nuclear arsenals would be compromised. “There were many questions in that regard,” a US official told ‘The Washington Post’.
What keeps US espionage baffled is why the Kremlin did not take prior action, since it is convinced that Putin also knew about the mercenary leader’s plans for twenty-four hours before. There would have been so many indications that Prigozhin was maneuvering for a coup that it was easy to tell that “something was up.”
A young man waves a Russian flag next to an armored vehicle in which the mercenaries show their pride by pointing out that they have been in Rostov. AFP
The image with which this 62-year-old former oligarch, owner of dozens of companies, has emerged from Rostov is not at all that of a defeated leader. Many analysts believe that he will remain an influential individual after his exile to Belarus, should he finally come to fruition. The agreement with the Russian government establishes his banishment in exchange for neither he nor his troops being prosecuted for treason. There are only questions about the future of his paramilitaries at this time. It is not known if they will maintain their current status or be forced to sign the integration contract in the regular armed forces, as the Ministry of Defense recently demanded of the rest of the private companies, including those of the Chechen leader Kadyrov. Precisely, the Chechen troops displaced this Saturday to stop the advance of the Wagner Group have also returned today to their combat zones in Ukraine.
a quiet morning
Rostov’s morning photograph does not correspond to that of a city that has experienced a military occupation. Circulation is low, but typically Sunday. Budennovsky Prospekt, the avenue assaulted only a few hours ago by tanks and heavily armed soldiers of fortune, is clear. Cafeterias reopen. The only signs of the invasion reside in the marks left by the tanks on the ground or the walls of some buildings.
The mercenaries prepare their departure by loading the tanks onto the trailers. EFE
The highway to Moscow and some highways in the region suffer occasional cuts to resurface the sections through which the tanks circulated. In Lipetsk, the military crushed the asphalt with the vain pretense of stopping the mercenary column. Work is also underway at the place where Wagner’s only confrontation with the Russian armed forces took place, with the outcome of three downed combat helicopters. Restrictions on transportation have been lifted, according to Rostov Region Deputy Minister for Regional Policy and Mass Communications Serge Tyurin. “The bus and train stations are operating normally, tickets are on sale and all destinations are scheduled,” he said.
The hangover remains. And the conviction of having experienced the strangest political-military episode of the invasion of one’s own home. Wagner’s boss, who many believed possible that he would change the fate of Russia and the war with a quiet march to Moscow at the head of 5,000 mercenaries, was greeted with applause. Immediately after the departure of the last armored car decorated with the letter Z, the Police arrived. She was greeted with insults and the cry of “Shame!”
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