The time factor is and will continue to be decisive in assessing more correctly what happened on Saturday 24 June, exactly one year and four months after Putin’s aggression, when 60 kilometers of tanks lined up headed towards Kiev. Something more incredible than the attempted blitz on Kiev took place before our incredulous eyes, even if repeatedly announced by the escalation of threatening and gruesome messages to Putin’s military leaders by Evgeny Prigozhinaccustomed to follow up on words, if not to anticipate them with the facts on which he built his terrifying fame.
The halted march on Moscow by the leader and master of the most powerful and formidable mercenary militia was in the first place “breaking a taboo, an open challenge to the Kremlin by an oligarchy, an affront that has no precedents” and demonstrates “how the war in Ukraine is changing the internal balance of power in Russia”. (Luca Steinmann, war reporter, author of The Russian Front). If what in the early hours was announced as a coup or a “Russian revolution” anticipating a possible civil war has “returned” 200 km from the capital, it is in any case difficult to reduce it to a “trade union demand, a party game” without following, at a show finished with “tarallucci and vodka” or consider it “a success for Putin” that would have “strengthened his leadership” and confused the US”.
Regardless of what the near future holds for the Wagnerian brigade, engine of “successes” and perpetrators of the worst atrocities in the field, and for their leader untouchable until recently, it appears undeniable that “the Russian leadership is disqualified” and that it is ongoing an arm wrestlingwith uncertain outcomes for Putin, within the factions closest to him but over which he no longer exercises decisive control.
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A few days later I don’t think that “the deep cracks that undermine the pyramid of power to the point of threatening its collapse” have disappeared, nor “the fragility of the Russian security and military structures that have not been able to prevent an attempted coup announced for months” also highlighted immediately by Lucio Caracciolo (The print of 25 June). Evgeny Prigozhin reiterated the elementary truth, denied beyond all evidence by Putin, that his march “showed serious security problems in Russia” (in the audio, dated June 26 from an unspecified place).
Previously he had dared to debunk Putin’s narration – also adopted by his friend B., a very faithful as well as “ardent pacifist” – of the defensive invasion to avert NATO’s expansionist aims. In fact, on the eve of the revolt classified as a “march for justice”, Putin’s real operational alter ego had released an explosive video on the authentic reasons for the “special operation” which according to him was not launched to save the Russian-speaking Donbass or real threats from NATO but to indulge the ambitions of Shoigu and acolytes and above all to guarantee the highest levels of the military kleptocracy to profit from military supplies.
And still in the last audio, while he denied having planned a coup, Prigozhin continued to target the Russian military leaders, with particular regard to the Shoigu-Gerasimov duo, for now armored by Putin, and to repeat that “if the special operation of February 24 had been entrusted to trained forces such as the Wagner it could have lasted a day“. A week after the failed uprising that paved the way for the “unthinkable”, purges have begun within the military elite to “cleanse” it of the many Wagner sympathizers infiltrated into the highest ranks. Emblematic is “the yellow” about the fate of General Surovikin, commander of the Russian air force and former head of Russian troops in Ukraine, “on good terms with Prigozhin”, whose brutality and ruthlessness he shared and, according to highly accredited sources, aware of his plans for rebellion. To get news of him, given that he left the scene since the fateful Saturday 24 June, Putin’s spokesman advised to “contact the defense minister” while the hypotheses of “simple arrest to be questioned” or allegations of conspiracy in the uprising, both more credible than assurances that “nothing happened to him”.
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About Prigozhin it is known only that he is or would be in Belarus in a hotel without windowsa precaution that may not be sufficient, under the “guardianship” of Lukashenko, where at least eight thousand mercenaries would have reached it – which could become many more by July 1st, the day on which the possibility of enlisting with a regular contract in the army of the Russian Federation expires. And the neighboring countries, from Poland to the Baltic countries, do not feel particularly reassured by the coexistence on the borders of Russian tactical nuclear weapons and of the brigade of “terrorists” that Russia has always officially denied arming and lavishly funding until it deemed it appropriate have to liquidate them.
But the practice of disposing of Wagner may prove far more painful for Putin than he anticipated, e potentially destructive. And not only because Wagner was the absolute protagonist “in the special operation”, with the blatant horrors practiced against civilians and minors in the great winter offensive in Donbass and the conquest of Bakhmut’s ashes. The exit of mercenaries from Ukraine is not alone an incalculable loss in strategic termsjust as the theoretical integration of Wagner militiamen into the regular ranks of the army would be a huge source of tension and internal conflict.
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Putin in Dagestan, crowds for the president between selfies and handshakes. But doubt reigns on the net: “Is he a double?”
On the substantial level of the structuring of Putin’s power, as we had known it up to now, the Putin-Prigozhin duo had shown itself to be a monolith not scratchable, a two-faced herm that could not be split. Nor should the internal popularity Prighozhin acquired be underestimated, at least according to the welcome reception by many Rostov residents of the tanks marching towards Moscow. Now Putin, after unwillingly revealing the face of fear in the aftermath of the “avoided bloodshed”, it is not well known with what means of “pressure” on the rioters, it flaunts the control that isn’t there and went to Dagestan for the first crowds.
As highlighted by Michel Eltchaninoff, a French philosopher of Russian origin who investigated the cultural foundations of the war in Ukraine in his book In Putin’s head, if not there is likely to be a revolution soon “We have to pay attention to the signs in Russian opinion. Putin is seventy years old, he has been in power for twenty-three, on this occasion he proved fragile, conveyed confusion, improvisation”. As for the opponents of Putin’s war, “either they are in prison or they are expatriates. Prigozhin has implemented the only way to oppose the war in Russia and that is to do it with weapons“. (The print, June 30, 2023)
For the first time we saw the naked tsar and his vain propaganda. An event that seemed unimaginable and could have happened because there is a people who are heroically continuing to resist and there are the deplorable Western democracies, which have understood that they have to support it with sanctions and arms.