The two rivers are not comparable: the first flows for 1,870 kilometers between forests and steppes, the other for just 35 kilometers before flowing into the Adriatic: yet the Don, crossed by the mercenaries of the Wagner Group heading to nearby Rostov, has become the he equivalent of the Rubicon that Julius Caesar crossed in 49 BC For the Roman general, returning from his triumphal campaign in Gaul, that was the border between Cisalpine Gaul and the territory of Rome that could not be crossed in arms. Julius Caesar ignored the warning of the Senate with his “Alea iacta est” (the data is taken) and with 5,000 men and 300 knights he marched on Rome, starting the civil war against Pompey that would lay the foundations for the birth of the Empire .
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Another “civil war”, as announced by the Wagner Group, was unleashed by Yevgeny Prigozhin with his 25,000 men crossing the Don River and conquering Rostov, the Russian city of a million inhabitants just across the Ukrainian border. A conquest that is not only symbolic because it is the strategic headquarters of the Southern Military District from which military operations in Ukraine were coordinated by the Minister of Defence, Serghei Shoigu, Prigozhin’s great antagonist. From there the mercenaries aim to advance towards Moscow.
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A surreal situation
The choice of Rostov by the Wagner group is therefore not accidental. And meanwhile the city is experiencing what the inhabitants call a “surreal situation”. This is what the populations living in Rostov-on-Don say, the southern city of Russia near the border with Ukraine where the mercenaries of the Wagner group have taken control of the military sites, after the call to insurrection launched by their leader Evgheni Prigozhin. Different testimonies, collected anonymously by telephone by breaking latest news due to the legal risks involved in talking about military issues in Russia today, say that “part of the city is living a normal life, the shops and bars are open, people are shopping and there are those who at the supermarket have also seen the Wagners queuing up to make purchases; the other half of the city, on the other hand, where the strategic headquarters of the southern military district are located, the buildings of the Ministry of the Interior, the FSB and the municipal administration, is more controlled and partially blocked.
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The surreal thing, says one of the witnesses, “is that you see men armed with machine guns in the car, next to people sitting quietly drinking coffee at the bar. “This morning, at least before Putin’s address to the nation, it was still possible to walk peacefully and photograph the tanks in the streets, they didn’t feel serene but the tanks were dispersed in different areas,” adds another witness. Rostov is home to one of the key military command centers for logistics and operations of the Russian military in Ukraine. The problem that the local inhabitants feel the most is that due to the “Fortress” plan that was implemented yesterday evening and which put the police and security forces on maximum alert, it is not possible to enter and leave the city. “Big traffic jams have formed and people haven’t slept since last night to monitor the situation,” said another witness. On the streets, ordinary citizens can be seen stopping to chat with the mercenaries – “all at least 40 years of age but calm”. “I asked one of them what was going to happen and she just replied ‘don’t worry, everything will be fine’,” says a woman who says she arrived in the city from nearby Taganrog by train this morning because the roads are blocked. “I heard a group of civilians say loudly ‘We will defend Putin’ only to laugh heartily; others instead criticized the ‘commander in chief’, as many now call the president, annoyed that he had called Prigozhin a traitor ».
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