Masks depicting Vladimir Putin and Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin (left) on display at a gift shop in St. Petersburg
Vladimir Putin disappeared from public view since pleading with Russians not to support the coup as its propagandists wondered how the rebels managed to get so close to Moscow.
On Sunday, officials insisted that Putin was in Kremlin at the time of the biggest threat to his 23-year rule, but they also said he would not appear on TV to appease the Russians.
Instead, Kremlin-controlled TV channels aired a soft-spoken interview with the Russian president filmed earlier in a week in which he talked about increasing the production of weapons.
Russian opposition news websites reported that Putin's presidential plane took off from Moscow at lunchtime on Saturday and headed towards St. Petersburg, after which it disabled the tracking system in the Tver region. Putin has a residence in the region.
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the coup attempt in Russia on Saturday showed Putin's regime was splitting.
“He had to defend Moscow from a mercenary which he himself created,” he said. “We see cracks appearing.”
U.S. intelligence officials said they were aware of a June 10 mutiny by Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries after the Kremlin ordered them to enlist in the regular Russian military.
“This is an unfolding story. We haven't seen the last act. We are following this very closely,” Mr. Blinken told CBS News.
Under the peace deal that ended Saturday night's uprising, Prigozhin agreed to move into exile in Belarus, and the normally hyperactive mercenary leader has not been seen since.
Kremlin sources told Meduza, a Russian to an opposition news site that Prigozhin asked on Saturday to negotiate a deal with the Kremlin after realizing his call for the desertion of regular army regiments had failed.
“Now he was expelled from Russia. The President will not forgive what he has done,” the source said. “The details of Prigozhin’s new position are yet to be worked out, but he will no longer have the same influence and resources.”
While Wagner Group mercenaries captured Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine this year, Meduza’s sources say that Putin grew tired of Prigozhin and supported the Russian military leaders in their dispute. Meduza reported that Putin did not speak to Prigozhin for some time and that the Russian president refused to answer his phone calls during the coup attempt.
The source also said that it was Prigozhin who insisted that Alexander Lukashenko, the President of Belarus, be credited with participating in the negotiations on a peace agreement.
Prigozhin needed a way to get out of the situation and save face. This is where Lukashenka intervened,” the source said.
After the coup ended on Saturday night, the Wagner fighters returned to their bases, and the Russian police and several units of the Russian National Guard that had indeed been deployed were disbanded. checkpoints in Moscow.
But while a battle for control of the Russian capital has been averted, even Putin's most loyal propagandists are wondering how a few thousand mercenaries were able to infiltrate Russia from Ukraine, take over a city of 1 million people, and drive within 150 miles of Moscow met with virtually no resistance.
Wagner in advance in detail
“If the tank columns are moving, why aren’t they stopped? Vladimir Solovyov announced this during his next Saturday evening broadcast on radio and television. “We need a level of protection that we can put on high alert in the event of an invasion of Russia.” even further.
“The balance of power has already been upset politically,” reads an editorial on his website. “The notorious “Kremlin towers” are swinging. Some may have to leave.”
And this level of unpredictability and chaos in Russia, which controls the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, should worry the West, analysts say.
Edward Lucas, a senior adviser at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told BBC Radio 4 that the UK should be concerned about who will follow Putin to the Kremlin.
“We may have a decade or more to deal with a highly dangerous and unpredictable Russia without even the superficial certainty we have. Putin is in power,” he said.
Life in Moscow returned to normal after the dramatic events on Saturday. Photo: Shutterstock
Putin's public image as a strongman has also been damaged by the sight of militants loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Kremlin leader of Chechnya, promising to save the city of Rostov in southern Russia from Wagner mercenaries, analysts say.
“Many in the elite will personally blame Putin for making things this far,” said Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of the Russia-focused consultancy R.Politik. “We underestimated Prigozhin, but we also clearly overestimated Putin. It's a huge blow for him.”
Sam Green, professor of Russian politics at King's College London, said Putin's weakness in the face of the uprising would be the only conversation in families across Russia.
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“Things that were previously unimaginable, like a leadership change, can become more believable,” he said.
Yekaterina Shulman, a Russian political scientist, said that while regional governors and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church supported Putin, these were empty messages of support from people who owe their careers to the Russian leader.
Far. more important was the lack of real support from ordinary people, as well as from the Russian special services.
“Law enforcement looked the other way. Not a single person came to the defense of the government. Not a civil servant, not a citizen, not a voter, not a taxpayer,” she told the BBC. “It did not matter that the Wagner group did not reach Moscow. It is important that he was able to show the world the incredible fragility (of Russia).”
Escalation is now “the only way out”
Professor Nikolai Petrov, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International Security, said that after this humiliation, Putin will want to demonstrate his strength .
“The only option left is escalation, which means not only an increase in the stakes in the war, but also an accelerated transformation of the regime,” he said. said.
And this shift in power in Russia, undermining the Kremlin's prestige under Putin since he ordered the failed invasion of Ukraine last year, was again celebrated in Rostov on Sunday.
The video shows people in the city center shaking hands with Wagner fighters and thanking them before the mercenaries retreat as ordered.
When ordinary police loyal to the Kremlin returned, people waved Wagner flags in their faces and booed.
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