After more than two days without appearing in public after the military mutiny that shook his power was aborted, Vladimir Putin monopolized the screens in Russia yesterday with several appearances to reaffirm his leadership and give an institutional image of strength. In what appears to be an attempt to establish the official version of what happened, the Russian president assured that the military and security services managed to avoid a civil war on June 24. The Russian population did not support the Wagner Group rebellion, he said. The leader of the mutineers, Yevgueni Prigozhin, is already in Belarus, where he will have to live in exile.
In a speech addressed to the army, Putin assured that Russia has been on the verge of "a civil war". He thanked the military for avoiding it and paid tribute to the Armed Forces pilots who were shot down by the mutineers.
"Together with brothers in arms, you have faced these problems whose result would inevitably have been chaos," Putin said at a ceremony in the Kremlin before a group of uniformed officers. "In fact, you have avoided a civil war," he added before calling for a minute's silence for the pilots who killed the rebels and who "did their duty honorably."
His first post-crisis appearance actually came on Monday night, when Putin addressed the nation in a televised message lasting just over five minutes. He then confirmed reports spread on social media that Wagner's forces had shot down Russian warplanes. “The courage and self-sacrifice of the fallen hero-pilots saved Russia from tragic and devastating consequences,” Putin said.
The official version of this chapter is currently incomplete, as there is no information on how many pilots died or the number of planes shot down. Some Russian Telegram channels that follow military activity in Russia, including the Rybar blog, with more than a million subscribers, had published that 13 pilots were killed. Among the downed aircraft, according to Rybar, there would be three MI-8 MTPR electronic warfare helicopters and an Ilyushin Il-18 plane with its crew.
Between Friday night and Saturday night Putin had to face the biggest challenge to his power since Boris Yeltsin ceded the presidency to him on New Year's Eve 1999. The Wagner Group, which has served as a shock force for the Russian forces in Ukraine, rose up against the Russian military command and asked for the head of the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff, General Valeri Gerasimov.
On Saturday morning Prigozhin announced that his men controlled Rostov-on-Don in the south and would march on Moscow, a thousand kilometers to the north.
Hours of tension and fear followed, as neither calls to desist from several Russian generals nor an urgent message from Putin on television calling his former ally a "traitor" came to fruition. The mercenary column passed without much opposition through the Voronezh and Lipetsk regions, reaching 200 kilometers from the Russian capital.
Prigozhin said on Monday that they did not meet much resistance and that Russia had a security problem. He was answered yesterday by Viktor Zólotov, director of the National Guard, who assured that the mercenaries managed to advance so much because the forces loyal to the Kremlin tried above all to reinforce the defenses of the Russian capital. "It's very simple: we concentrate all our forces in Moscow," said the former head of Putin's personal security.
At night an agreement was reached in extremis between the Kremlin and Prigozhin, with the mediation of the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. The mutiny was over, the rebels turned back, Moscow promised not to prosecute them, and Prigozhin agreed to go into exile.
Putin admitted yesterday for the first time in years the special relationship that Russian power had with this private army that has acted in the Donbass, in several African countries or in Syria following the interests of the Kremlin. Wagner has been financed by the Russian budget, Putin explained in a meeting with the military. The group led by Prigozhin received 86,000 million rubles, (about 922 million euros) from the Ministry of Defense between May 2022 and May 2023.
The Wagner Group was created in 2014 by Yevgueni Prigozhin, already then with close ties to the Kremlin. In fact, he was dubbed “Putin's cook” by the press because of the contracts his catering company won with the Kremlin and other Russian institutions. For years he remained in the shadows, acknowledging only that he was the one behind this army last year.
After such close collaboration with power, the Wagner Group and its boss have become pests. On Monday Putin gave the mercenaries the choice of joining the regular Russian army, returning to their families or following Prigozhin to Belarus. Yesterday the FSB withdrew the criminal accusation against all of them for attempted military rebellion. But it is unlikely that Prigozhin will be able to return to Russia. Putin said he is going to investigate Prigozhin's catering company, Concord, which Putin says has won 80 billion rubles (862 million euros) in contracts to supply food to the Russian military.
In his appearances, Putin never mentioned Prigozhin by name, an attitude that is not new. In previous years, when he spoke of the now imprisoned opponent Alexéi Navalni, he did not refer to him either by his first name or by his last name.
Yesterday it also became known that Prigozhin is already in exile from Belarus. Lukashenko confirmed it. “Security guarantees will be provided to you, as Putin promised,” he assured.
Lukasehnko said that "Belarus will be able to benefit from the experience" of these fighters, but from his words it cannot be deduced that they will find a golden exile. Lukashenko suggested that this could be temporary. “As promised, if you want to spend some time here, we will help you. Naturally, on their own," the Belarusian leader was quoted as saying by the official Belta news agency. And he denied that Minsk is building camps especially for them, as the Verstka investigative portal had published. They can stay, he said, in "abandoned camps" where they can "pitch their tents."
