(UPDATE: Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, above, released an 11-minute video Monday in which he said last weekend's seizure of two major Russian region capitals amounted to protest, not an attempted military coup, NPR reports.)
Over the weekend, The Wagner Group’s mercenary leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, took control of Russia’s Southern Military District HQ in Rostov-on-Don, and another major regional capital with troops and tanks on their streets. He demanded Vladimir Putin sack his military leadership.
Prigozhin sent 25,000 soldiers from his private military company (also until now known as “Putin’s private army”) charging toward the Kremlin, 600 miles to the north of Rostov-on-Don, but they stopped about 200 kilometers, or roughly 125 miles short of Moscow with no reported injuries, according to The New York Times. Footage surfaced of Prigozhin in control of the Southern Military District HQ, where he apparently had Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and top military officer, Gen. Valery Gerasimov surrounded by Wagner guards, “Perhaps the most shocking scene of the day,” said the NYT.
However … Prigozhin backed off his insurrection before Wagner troops got any closer to Moscow and was then let off without arrest by Russian officials. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters that Prigozhin instead will exile to Belarus in a deal brokered with that country’s leader and close Putin ally, Aleksandr Lukashenko.
How it started: ICYMI, Prigozhin was a 30-year ally of Putin, first as a caterer, then as head of an elite and brutal army of mercenaries. Wagner – named after the German composer – was formed during Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and it joined Russian forces after it became clear to Putin his February 2022 invasion wasn’t going as planned. Prigozhin recruited soldiers from Russian prisons and pushed them into the bloody battle over Bakmut and then feuded with Russian Gens. Shoigu and Gerasimov.
Last Friday night, Prigozhin claimed Russian forces attacked Wagner troops as they slept in their camps. Russia denies this, says the NYT, and the claim has not independently been verified. On Saturday, Prigozhin led a force of 25,000 from Ukraine to Rostov-on-Don, Russia, which he took over apparently with no resistance. Saturday morning, Putin delivered a five-minute address to his nation in which he described Prigozhin (without naming him) as a traitor and vowed to crush the uprising.
“This is a stab in the back of our country and our people,” Putin said, comparing the insurrection to events leading up to the 1917 Russian Revolution and the end of the Russian Empire he so much longs to restore (per The Kyiv Independent).
Independent Russian news outlet Meduza quoted unnamed sources reporting Prigozhin initially attempted to get in touch with the Russian presidential administration midday Saturday as his fighters advanced toward Moscow (per The Kyiv Independent, again).
Too late?: Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told the NYT Putin underestimated the threat from Prigozhin and Wagner Group. “He thought he was totally dependent and loyal.”
What’s next?: Prigozhin is exiled to Belarus, but Wagner troops are not. But even if Putin can somehow persuade many of those 25,000 returned Wagner soldiers to turn around and head back into Ukraine, progress on Russia’s invasion should be further compromised, especially with Ukraine’s counter-offensive already underway.
Can Putin hold on to power? The only certainty is he will double-down on repression of his own people.
Epilogue: Neither Putin nor Prigozhin have been seen in public since Saturday, NPR reports.
UPDATE: Monday, Putin made his first video appearance since his condemnation of Saturday's insurrection, BBC reports, though it is not clear when or where the video was made.
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SCOTUS this week – Supreme Court decisions are due before the end of June on four important cases (per U.S. News & World Report):
•Affirmative action
•President Biden’s $10,000 student loan forgiveness program
•Religious rights
•Voting and the “independent state legislature” theory.
•••
Up on the Hill – The House and the Senate are off through July 9.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa
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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news