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Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
As I said, Putin shot himself in the head by verifying a military mutiny.
As I said, Putin shot himself in the head by verifying a military mutiny.
This long collection is all about Putin’s “weakness.” Perhaps the only truthful lines in this mass of words are these at the very end:
“Video showed people in the centre of the city shaking hands with Wagner fighters and thanking them before the mercenaries withdrew, as ordered.
“When regular police officers loyal to the Kremlin moved back in, people waved Wagner flags in their faces and booed.”
Russia coup latest: Cracks in Putin’s power revealed by Wagner mutiny, US says
Russia coup latest: Cracks in Putin’s power revealed by Wagner mutiny, US says 25 June 2023 • 9:23pm
Putin has not been seen in public since Saturday morning CREDIT: Gavriil Grigorov
The attempted mutiny in Russia shows “real cracks” in the power of Vladimir Putin, America’s top diplomat has said.
In the first direct comments by the US government, Anthony Blinken said Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigohzin had issued a “direct challenge” to the Russian president.
“I don’t think we have seen the final act,” Mr Blinken said, after a deal was struck to turn Prigohzin’s fighters back from Moscow on Saturday night.
Putin has not been seen in public since addressing the nation on Saturday morning, vowing to put down the rebellion.
Mr Blinken described the conflict as an “internal matter” for Putin, who must now seek to address the turmoil in the weeks ahead as the fracture threatens Moscow’s military capabilities.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, echoed Mr Blinken on Sunday, saying Wagner’s revolt had highlighted the divisions within Russian leadership.
The abandoned march on Moscow “shows the divisions that exist within the Russian camp, and the fragility of both its military and its auxillary forces”, Mr Macron told Provence newspaper.
He added that “the situation is still developing” and that he was “following the events hour by hour”.
The rebellion was the culmination of Prigozhin’s frustration with leaders within the Russian military over their conduct in the invasion of Ukraine.
I could have taken Ukraine in a day, says Wagner boss
Yevgeny Prigozhin insists advance on Moscow was ‘masterclass’ in how to launch invasion
26 June 2023 • 9:30pm
Yevgeny Prigozhin has claimed his mutiny was a “masterclass” in how to launch an invasion, and showed Kremlin leaders that he could have seized Ukraine within a day.
In his first comments since the revolt, the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group said his shock march on Moscow had been a protest rather than a coup and he had not tried to overthrow Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
Thousands of Wagner fighters came within 120 miles of the capital, demanding the overthrow of Russia’s military leadership, before turning back on Saturday night after a deal was struck with the Kremlin.
Prigozhin did not reveal his location but is expected to go into exile in Belarus under the terms of the agreement.
In his comments on Monday, released as an 11-minute audio message, Prigozhin tried to cast his uprising as a lesson for the Kremlin and proof of his previous warnings about serious security flaws in Russia.
Boasting of Wagner’s military prowess and popular backing, but also appearing to offer an olive branch to Putin, he said: “We were there to show our protest, not topple the government.”
Prigozhin said he had acted to save his private military company (PMC) and bring Russia’s inept military leadership to justice.
He also declared that his troops had delivered “a masterclass in how it should have been done on Feb 24 2022 [when Russia sent troops into Ukraine]” and said: “In 24 hours we covered the distance that would be equal to the distance from the starting point of Russian troops on Feb 24 2022, to Kyiv.”
If the invasion had been launched “by a unit just as well-trained, with the same level of morale and preparedness as PMC Wagner, then maybe the special military operation would have lasted 24 hours”, he added.
Prigozhin said his troops had been met by flag-waving civilians as they marched on Moscow at the weekend, but stopped short of the capital when it became clear that “a lot of blood will be spilled”.
“They were all happy when we passed through,” he said. “Our march of justice has shed light on so many things we’ve talked about before: grave security breaches across the country. We blocked all military units and airfields that were on our way.”
On Monday night, in an angry address to the nation, Putin said “blackmail attempts” were “doomed to failure”. Earlier in the day, Putin appeared in a video praising Russia’s young engineers but did not mention the mutiny. It was not clear when his speech was filmed.
Mikhail Mishustin, Russia’s prime minister, called on the cabinet to “rally around” the president in a televised government meeting.
In a sign that Prigozhin’s demand for the removal of Sergei Shoigu from his role as Russia’s defence minister had not been met, the Russian defence ministry released video of him visiting a command post.
Joe Biden, the US president, said on Monday night that the uprising was part of a struggle within the Russian system, and the United States and its allies were not involved in it, adding: “We had nothing to do with this.”
James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, told MPs that Prigozhin’s rebellion had been an unprecedented challenge to Putin’s authority and said: “It is clear cracks are emerging in Russian support for the war.”
Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said the Wagner march on Moscow had “exposed that Russia’s reserves are threadbare”, but gave a more cautious appraisal.
At an event held by the Royal United Services Institute think tank, Mr Wallace said that only “about 2,500” people had taken part in the rebellion – much lower than previous estimates.
Earlier in the day, doubts emerged over whether Prigozhin’s deal to end the mutiny had secured him amnesty when Russian state media reported that he was still under investigation.
It also remained unclear what effect the rebellion would have on Wagner Group and its 25,000 troops. Prigozhin complained in his message that “as a result of intrigues and ill-considered decisions” the company had been due to close on July 1 and its fighters to sign up with regular Russian forces.
Only one or two per cent had agreed to sign up, he claimed, adding: “Experienced fighters, experienced commanders would simply be smashed and turned into meat; they would not be able to use their combat potential and combat experience.”
But Prigozhin also used his audio message to thank Aleksandr Lukashenko, the Belarusian leader, for offering to let Wagner continue operations, saying Mr Lukashenko had “extended his hand and offered to find solutions for the further work of the Wagner PMC within a legal jurisdiction”.
Russian-language Telegram channels claimed Prigozhin had been spotted in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, but provided no evidence.
Meanwhile, Russia tried to portray an air of returning to normality after a weekend of intense political intrigue.
State media said Wagner offices had begun displaying recruitment posters and hiring again in Tyumen and Novosibirsk. Staff at Wagner’s headquarters in St Petersburg said they were working as normal.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, also said the country would continue Wagner’s work in Mali and the Central African Republic, but did not clarify who would conduct the operations.
Wagner’s forces “are working there as instructors. This work, of course, will continue”, he said, adding that the mutiny would not affect Russia’s ties with “partners and friends”.
Wagner’s stalled coup will cripple Russia’s war in Ukraine, say experts
Doubts over mercenaries’ loyalty may stop Kremlin from using them again in military offensives
ByColin Freeman IN KRAMATORSK
25 June 2023 • 6:55pm
Members of the Wagner Group returning to base after a Russian coup was called off CREDIT: Anadolu Agency
The chaos inflicted on Russia’s armed forces by the Wagner Group coup attempt may prevent it from mounting any further serious military offensives in Ukraine, analysts said on Sunday night.
While the mercenary group’s boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has ordered his fighters to return to their front-line bases, doubts over the 25,000-strong force’s loyalty are likely to limit their future use to the Russian military’s high command.
Ben Hodges, a former US general, said that even if Wagner’s units were broken up and distributed across the rest of Russia’s military, regular army commanders would be unlikely to fully trust them.
“Wagner troops will either walk away or be distributed across the Russian Army as individual replacements, who will be under suspicion,” he wrote on Twitter.
Under the terms of the truce that made Prigozhin call off his coup attempt on Saturday, Wagner troops who took part in the mutiny will be offered immunity from prosecution, while others will be permitted to sign formal contracts with the Russian army.
It is unclear, though, how many will want to take up the offer – or whether Russian army commanders will really want them in their ranks.
“The whole coup business still seems very murky, but it means that many soldiers have now lost faith in their central command,” said Daniel Ridley, an ex-British soldier who runs the Trident Defence Initiative, a private training programme for Ukrainian forces.
“We may now never see another joint Russian offensive, and what territory Russia still has in Ukraine, they may now struggle to hold on to.”
Wagner’s forces have been involved in some of the heaviest fighting of the war, particularly in the gruelling 10-month battle around the Donbas city of Bakhmut, which the Kremlin has claimed as one of its few victories.
While much of that fighting has been done by Wagner’s ex-convict recruits, who have died in their thousands, the group’s hardcore of professional soldiers remains largely intact, Mr Ridley said.
It was their ranks, he added, not those of the ex-convicts, who appeared to have been leading the coup attempt in Russia.
Professional kit
“You could see that they had professional kit and looked good – these weren’t the convict troops,” he said. “They’re not a spent force at all, otherwise they wouldn’t have attempted the coup in the first place.”
That group’s professional expertise, he added, had been crucial to the Russian push around Donbas cities like Bakhmut and Soledar. Their successes, though, had also nurtured an esprit de corps that made them see themselves as separate from the Russian regulars.
“These people are loyal to Wagner, it’s quite a famous unit now,” he said. “They won’t lightly drop the Wagner patch to sign up for the Russian ministry of defence.”
In and around Bakhmut, where Wagner troops know the ground intimately, the Kremlin was still likely to have to use the Wagner force in some form. “They are willing to take losses and they are also very aggressive,” Mr Ridley added.
However, Russian army commanders are likely to now fear that if they order Wagner troops into any costly battles, they could risk a mutiny in the ranks that could spark a repeat of Saturday’s insurrection.
Putin disappears as allies ask how rebels got so close to Moscow
Putin disappears as allies ask how rebels got so close to Moscow
Russian leader hides from public view while formerly loyal media outlets admit coup attempt has broken his grip on power
25 June 2023 • 6:49pm
Face masks depicting Vladimir Putin and Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, left, on display at a souvenir shop in St Petersburg
Vladimir Putin has disappeared from public view since pleading with Russians not to back a coup as his propagandists questioned how rebels were able to get so close to Moscow.
Officials insisted on Sunday that Putin was in the Kremlin throughout the biggest threat to his 23-year reign but they also said that he would not appear on television to reassure Russians.
Instead, Kremlin-controlled television channels broadcast a soft interview with the Russian president filmed earlier in the week in which he talked about boosting weapons production.
Russian opposition news websites have reported that Putin’s presidential plane took off from Moscow at lunchtime on Saturday and flew towards St Petersburg before it switched off its tracking system around the Tver region. Putin has a residence in the region.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said that the coup attempt in Russia on Saturday showed that Putin’s regime was fracturing.
“He’s had to defend Moscow against a mercenary of his own making,” he said. “We see cracks emerging.”
US intelligence officials said that they were aware that a mutiny by Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries was brewing on June 10 after the Kremlin ordered them to sign up to the regular Russian military.
“This is an unfolding story. We haven’t seen the last act. We’re watching it very closely,” Mr Blinken told CBS News in an interview.
Under a peace deal that ended the uprising on Saturday evening, Prigozhin agreed to move into exile in Belarus and the usually hyperactive mercenary leader has not been seen since.
Kremlin sources told Meduza, a Russian opposition news website, that Prigozhin had asked to negotiate a deal on Saturday with the Kremlin after he realised that his call for regular army regiments to desert had failed.
“He has now been ousted from Russia. The president will not forgive what he has done,” a source said. “Details still need to be worked out regarding Prigozhin’s new position but he will not have the same influence and resources.”
Although Wagner Group mercenaries captured Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine this year, Meduza’s sources said that Putin had grown weary of Prigozhin and had backed Russian military commanders in their dispute. Meduza reported that Putin had not talked to Prigozhin for some time and that the Russian president refused to take his phone call during the coup attempt.
A source also said that it was Prigozhin who had insisted that Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarus president, be credited with negotiating a peace deal.
“Prigozhin needed a way of getting out and saving face. That’s where Lukashenko came in,” the source said.
Since the end of the coup on Saturday evening, Wagner fighters have returned to their bases and Russian police and the handful of Russian National Guard units that did deploy dismantled checkpoints around Moscow.
But, although a battle for control of the Russian capital was averted, even Putin’s most loyal propagandists have questioned just how a few thousand mercenaries were able to cross into Russia from Ukraine, capture a city of 1 million people and drive to within 150 miles of Moscow virtually unopposed.
“If tank columns are advancing, why are they not being stopped? Vladimir Solovyov said during his regular Saturday evening radio and TV broadcast. “We need a layer of defence that we can put on high alert if there is an invasion of Russia.”
Tsargrad, a nationalist Orthodox media unit that has been a strong supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, went even further.
“Politically, the balance of existing forces has already been broken,” it said in an editorial on its website. “The notorious ‘Kremlin towers’ are wobbling. Some people may have to leave.”
And this level of unpredictability and chaos in Russia, which controls the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, should worry the West, said analysts.
Edward Lucas, a senior adviser at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, told BBC Radio 4 that Britain should be worried about who follows Mr Putin into the Kremlin.
“We face perhaps a decade or more of dealing with a deeply dangerous and unpredictable Russia without even the sort of superficial certainty we have of having Putin in power,” he said.
Life has been returning to normal in Moscow after Saturday’s dramatic events CREDIT: Shutterstock
Putin’s public image as a strongman had also been dented by the sight of fighters loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Kremlin leader of Chechnya, pledging to save the southern Russian city of Rostov from Wagner mercenaries, analysts said.
”Many in the elite will personally blame Putin for the fact that everything went so far,“ said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the Russia-focused consultancy R.Politik. ”We underestimated Prigozhin, but we have also clearly overestimated Putin. This is a huge blow to him.”
Sam Greene, professor of Russian politics at King’s College London, said that Putin’s weakness in the face of a rebellion would be the only conversation in households across Russia.
”Previously unimaginable things, like a change of leadership, may become more plausible,“ he said.
Ekaterina Shulman, a Russian political scientist, said that although regional governors and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church all backed Putin, these were empty messages of support from people who owed their careers to the Russian leader.
Far more important was the lack of genuine support from ordinary people and also from the Russian security services.
“The law enforcement agencies looked the other way. Not a single person came out to defend the government. Not a civil servant or a citizen or voter or taxpayer,” she told the BBC. “It didn’t matter that Wagner Group didn’t reach Moscow. It is important that it was able to show the world the incredible fragility (of Russia).”
Escalation now ‘the only option’
Prof Nikolai Petrov, a visiting researcher at the German Institute for International Security Affairs, said that after this humiliation Putin will want to demonstrate his strength.
“There remains only the option of escalation, which means not only raising the stakes in the war but also an accelerated transformation of the regime,” he said.
And this shift in power in Russia, the fracturing of Kremlin prestige under Putin since he ordered his failed invasion of Ukraine last year, was again highlighted in Rostov on Sunday.
Video showed people in the centre of the city shaking hands with Wagner fighters and thanking them before the mercenaries withdrew, as ordered.
When regular police officers loyal to the Kremlin moved back in, people waved Wagner flags in their faces and booed.