After more than two days without appearing in public since the military mutiny that had shaken his power was aborted, Vladimir Putin grabbed 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 fix the official version of what has happened, the Russian president assured that the military forces and the security services managed on June 24 to avoid a civil war. The Russian population did not support the Wagner Group's rebellion, he said. The leader of the mutineers, Yevgeny 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 preventing it and paid tribute to the pilots of the armed forces who were shot down by the mutineers.
"Together with the brothers in arms, you have faced these problems the result of which would inevitably have been chaos," Putin said at a ceremony in the Kremlin in front of a group of uniformed men. "In fact, you have avoided a civil war", he added before asking for a minute of silence for the pilots who killed the rebels and who "did their duty with honor".
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 on social media that Wagner's forces had shot down Russian fighter jets. "The bravery and self-sacrifice of the fallen hero-pilots have saved Russia from tragic and devastating consequences," Putin said.
The official version on 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 blog Rybar, with more than a million subscribers, reported that 13 pilots had been killed. Among the downed aircraft, according to Rybar, were three MI-8 MTPR electronic warfare helicopters and an Iliushin Il-18 aircraft with its crew.
Between Friday night and Saturday night, Putin faced 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 shock force of the Russian forces in Ukraine, rose up against the Russian military command and demanded the heads of the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Guerassimov.
On Saturday morning Prigojin announced that his men controlled Rostov-on-Don, in the south, and that they would march on Moscow, a thousand kilometers to the north.
They were hours of tension and fear, because neither the calls to desist from several Russian generals nor an urgent message from Putin on television calling his former ally a "traitor" yielded results. The column of mercenaries passed without much opposition through the regions of Voronezh and Lipetsk, and came within 200 kilometers of the Russian capital.
Prigozhin said on Monday that they had not met much resistance and that Russia had a security problem. Yesterday he was answered by Víktor Zólotov, director of the National Guard, who assured that the mercenaries had managed to advance so far because the forces loyal to the Kremlin had mainly tried to strengthen the defenses of the Russian capital. "It's very simple: we concentrated 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, Aleksandr Lukashenko. The riot was over, the rebels turned around, Moscow promised not to prosecute them and Prigozhin agreed to go into exile.
Yesterday, Putin admitted for the first time in years the special relationship that Russian power maintains 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 from the Russian budget, Putin explained in a meeting with the military. The group led by Prigozhin received 86 billion rubles (about 922 million euros) from the Ministry of Defense between May 2022 and May 2023.
In fact, the press called him "Putin's cook" because of the contracts his catering company had secured with the Kremlin and other Russian institutions. For years he remained in the shadows, and only acknowledged that he was the one behind this army last year.
After this close collaboration with power, the Wagner Group and its boss have become infamous. On Monday, Putin gave the mercenaries the option of joining the regular Russian army, returning to their families or following Prigozhin to Belarus. Yesterday the FSB withdrew the criminal charge against all members of the group for attempted military rebellion. But it is unlikely that Prigozhin will be able to return to Russia. Putin said Prigozhin's catering company Concord, which Putin said had obtained 80 billion rubles (862 million euros) in contracts to supply food to the Russian military, would be investigated.
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 oppositionist Aleksei Navalni, he did not refer to him either by his first name or by his last name.
Yesterday it was also known that Prigozhin is already in exile in Belarus. Lukashenko confirmed it. "Security guarantees will be provided, as Putin promised," he assured.
Lukashenko 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 there. Lukashenko suggested it could be temporary. "As I promised, if you want to spend some time here, we will help you. Naturally, on their own," said the Belarusian leader, quoted by the official Belta agency. And he denied that Minsk is building camps especially for them, as the investigative portal Verstka had published. They can stay, he said, in "abandoned camps" where they can "set up their tents".
