In Kremlin Stagecraft, Putin tries to rewrite the mutiny in Russia

During a mercenary’s day-long mutiny against the Russian army, President Vladimir V. Putin appeared only once and vowed “decisive actions” to take “a betrayal of our people.”

After the five-minute speech, Mr. Putin had disappeared from view again, leaving Russians to marvel at their president’s absence amid the most dramatic challenge to his rule in 23 years.

But the Kremlin’s imaging machine sprang into action on Tuesday, when Putin suddenly made televised speeches — an attempt to rewrite the story of what happened and reassure the Russian public that he’s still in power, whether or not people can see him now. see or not. not.

After an angry speech to the nation, delivered at about 10 p.m. Moscow time on Monday, Putin met with his Security Council. Close by — just one seat away, so not too close — was Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whose feud with the Wagner mercenary boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led to the mutiny and a march on Moscow.

Mr. Prigozhin had spent months berating Mr. Shoigu and Russia’s top general Valery V. Gerasimov for their handling of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, accusing them of cowardice, corruption and incompetence. Mr Prigozhin has also insisted that his rebellion was only about them, not Mr Putin.

Mr Shoigu standing by Mr Putin’s side at the Security Council meeting showed that he remains in favor of the president enough to be seen as a close adviser. Mr. Shoigu still has many critics, especially among influential pro-war bloggers, and whether he will ultimately keep his job is an open question.

projecting TRIUMPH

A thank you to soldiers of a stage.

With a red carpet on towering stairs and dozens of soldiers in front of him, Putin on Tuesday thanked the military for “essentially stopping a civil war” in remarks broadcast on state media.

The speech finally showed Mr. Putin outside a nondescript room and in a recognizable place: the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square, the historic seat of power. Mr. Putin has often used the palatial buildings and chambers of the Kremlin, a fortified complex in the heart of Moscow, to project the image of an extraordinary Russian leader, flanked by loyal officers and resembling the generations of tsars who ruled from the Kremlin. walls.

The triumphant images and heroic rhetoric contrasted sharply with the weekend’s photos and videos when it seemed no one was in charge: Wagner fighters charging into a major city in armored vehicles, Mr. Prigozhin chatting with military officers in a command center he owns. had just visited. confiscated.

And a video feed of his speech offered a different perspective than the photos. In the video, Mr Putin, who has often kept ministers, aides and world leaders at a physical distance since the pandemic, stands on a podium dozens of feet away from the soldiers he was addressing.

Depict control

The president as a state.

Mr Putin also spoke to Russian military personnel in the Kremlin and combined the images of a modern president sitting at his desk like a workman with the opulence and distance of Imperial Russia. Behind him stood a statue of Peter the Great, the 18th-century tsar to whom Putin compared himself last summer.

In his remarks, Mr Putin again thanked the soldiers and said their actions prevented “complete chaos and civil war”. His emphasis on loyalty emphasized that allegiance to the state — with Putin, always near Russian flags, his dominant and most visible representation — was the only way to avoid catastrophe.

The message was in line with the years of imagery and language of Mr. Putin, who has been calling himself the protector of stability for decades.

He also said that Wagner was funded entirely by the state. In doing so, he essentially claimed that the mercenaries were always just a tool of the Kremlin and never beyond its control, despite the fact that Mr. Prigozhin’s fighters took a major city within hours and reached it within 200 kilometers of Moscow.

And Mr. Putin tried to paint a portrait of wider success on the battlefield, returning to the talking points of the Russian state media before Mr. Prigozhin’s armed uprising. He claimed that Ukraine’s counter-offensive failed badly and that Kiev had lost dozens of tanks and more than 100 armored vehicles in the past seven days.