The situation in Russia is without precedent and could either presage civil war or turn out to be military bluster from Yevgeny Prigozhin — the head of the private Wagner militia and a very blustery man.
Prigozhin has been making blood-curdling threats against the Russian military these last few months after accusing the regular army of denying his militia fighters adequate supplies of ammunition when they were fighting for their lives in front of the crossroads town of Bakhmut. There have reportedly been some armed clashes between regular Russian military units and Wagner fighters, although nothing as serious as what’s been happening the last hours in Rostov-on-Don, a southern Russian city on the Don River.
Wagner forces have crossed from occupied eastern Ukraine into the big southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and claim to have taken control of its military facilities. Wagner forces say they’ve surrounded the military headquarters — an important regional military hub. Prigozhin says his troops are prepared to march on Moscow, and indeed, a large column of armor has been spotted on the road heading for the Russian capital.
Prigozhin says his beef is with the Russian military brass and especially Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and not Putin. The Wagner leader resented Shoigu’s efforts to bring the five major private militias in Russia to heel by forcing them to sign defense ministry contracts. Otherwise, they would be denied supplies.
Prigozhin took that order as a challenge to his authority and marched into Rostov-on-Don, captured several military installations, and is now daring Putin to dislodge him.
Does Prigozhin want some kind of power-sharing arrangement with Putin? Is he seeking to supplant the president and end his 23-year rule? It’s impossible to say at this point. But one ominous sign for Putin is that in the takeover of Rostov-on-Don, regular Russian troops barely lifted a finger to help their military leaders fight off the mercenaries.
Wagner troops, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, earlier in the day took over the main military headquarters for southern Russia, in Rostov, and other installations there, encountering virtually no resistance from the regular armed forces. Wagner also sent columns of troops northward toward Moscow, as the Russian army rushed to cut off highways and defend the capital city.
Until Saturday, Prigozhin focused his diatribes on Russia’s military leadership, avoiding direct attacks on Putin. But, responding to the Russian president, he said that Wagner’s men are not traitors but real patriots of Russia. Putin, Prigozhin added, is “profoundly mistaken,” and Wagner won’t follow his orders as it pursues the fight against “those who had gathered around scoundrels.”
“Whatever happens now, what we’re seeing is historic and it will have serious consequences for Putin,” said Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin who is now a regime critic living outside Russia. “This feels like the initial phase of a revolution.”
Putin is in no mood to be generous. In a speech on Saturday morning, he didn’t mention the Wagner chief by name but described his moves as a “criminal adventure, a grave crime, an armed mutiny.”
It is too soon to speculate about what it all means. Is Putin really in trouble? If Prigozhin’s troops make it to Moscow, the possibility exists of a snowball effect: troops deserting and going over to Wagner as the momentum of the “March for Justice” turns into a military revolt. But it’s far too soon to start burying Putin quite yet.
Naturally, the Ukrainian government is giddy.
“We are little-by-little running out of popcorn,” jokes Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister.
Sak has, like the rest of the world, been watching events unfold in Russia at an “unprecedented speed”.
Speaking to BBC World Service Newshour, Saks says just before Russia began its 2022 attack on Ukraine the world thought Russia had “the second most powerful army in the world”.
“Yesterday everybody knew that Russia was the second most powerful army in Ukraine and today we’re seeing how… the Russian army is becoming the second most powerful army in Russia.”
Sak believes events in Russia could be the start of something extremely significant. He says the Kremlin has been lying “for such a long time… about the losses of the Russian army” and that sooner or later the situation would “implode and lead to a civil war”.
Prigozhin said that the war on Ukraine was launched on false pretenses and accused Russia’s military of hiding the true scale of casualties among Russian forces on the front. The private agony of Russian families has been ignored by the Putin regime, and Prigozhin obviously believes that could be a potent PR weapon to put pressure on Putin going forward.
We’ll have a better understanding of what’s happening in the next 24-48 hours.
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