Gripped by uncertainty after mutiny, Russians note absence of Kremlin leaders
Confusion and uncertainty reigned in Russia on Sunday, with neither President Vladimir V. Putin nor Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of a mutinous group of mercenaries, making a public appearance somewhere a day after the deepest government crisis in three decades – an open military rebellion – seemed harmless.
Even as state television tried to proclaim that Russian unity and “maturity” had triumphed, independent commentators assessing the damage concluded that Putin’s aura of infallibility and invincibility had been pierced. And some wondered aloud why much of the Russian leadership went unseen or heard.
Apart from Putin, neither Sergei K. Shoigu, the defense minister, nor Valery V. Gerasimov, the military chief of staff, had appeared in public since the uprising began Friday night. Many heads of the country’s security services also turned out to be invisible.
“Where was the Ministry of Defense leadership during the approach of the armed unit to Moscow?” wrote Yuri Kotenok, one of a small tribe of influential military bloggers who have emerged as a supportive yet critical voice regarding the war in Ukraine. Could a foreign enemy, he asked, march on the capital with as much ease?
World leaders also agreed. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Sunday that Mr Prigozhin’s rebellion had exposed cracks in Mr Putin’s grip on power. “It was a direct challenge to Putin’s authority,” Mr Blinken said on CBS’s “Face the nation.”
Finally, Mr. Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary force known as Wagner, recalled his men after staging an armed uprising against the military leadership for nearly 24 hours over the weekend. But the damage was already done, not least because his blistering criticism of the military leaders as incompetent included questioning the Kremlin’s justifications for invading its neighbor in the first place.
Russians – and the world – had watched in horror as his columns of armored vehicles moved closer to Moscow with little armed resistance, threatening Putin and raising the specter of civil war in the nuclear-armed state.
“Putin and the state have received a serious blow,” wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of the political analysis firm R. Politik. She predicted that it would have major consequences for the regime.
Ms. Stanovaya noted that Mr. Prigozhin only changed course after Mr. Putin, an old ally, expressed anger at what the president described as a “stab in the back”. Mr. Prigozhin, she wrote, “felt he was unprepared to assume the role of a revolutionary.”
“He was also unprepared for the fact that Wagner was about to reach Moscow, where his only option remained – ‘take the Kremlin’ – an action that would inevitably result in his and his fighters being wiped out,” he wrote. Mrs Stanovaya. .
A new analysis by FilterLabs.AI, a company that tracks public sentiment in Russia by monitoring social media and internet forums, found that Mr Prigozhin was also a victim of a propaganda attack by the Kremlin. And access to Telegram channels controlled by or supporting Mr Prigozhin became more difficult, with users reporting delays.
Public support for Mr. Prigozhin and Wagner dropped sharply, FilterLabs found.
“For Prigozhin’s campaign to work, he would have needed a lot of support in Moscow,” according to the FilterLabs analysis. “This did not happen, despite his own support and media campaigns.”
Instead, a deal was reached.
The Wagner troops would turn, and Mr. Prigozhin could go to neighboring Belarus and avoid criminal charges. The Wagner fighters would also be acquitted.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said the agreement was made to “avoid bloodshed, avoid internal confrontation, avoid clashes with unpredictable consequences.” He did not indicate that the uprising would lead to changes in Russian military leadership, as Mr Prigozhin had demanded, and said Russia’s military operations in Ukraine would continue unchanged.
The deal that defused hostilities was credited to Belarusian leader Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, an ally of Putin. Of course, if Mr. Putin had fallen, Mr. Lukashenko would also have been vulnerable, so by helping his patron, he also helped himself.
“Putin lost because he showed how weak his system is, how easily he can be challenged,” said Pavel Slunkin, a former Belarusian diplomat and analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Prigozhin challenged, he attacked, he was so brutal and then retreated, looking like a loser. Only Lukashenko won points.”
The insurgency, even if broken down, could now erode Russia’s standing in the world as partners like China reassess the strength of Mr Putin’s authority.
Mr Prigozhin was found to be unusually quiet on Sunday, a day after he was seen driving away from the military headquarters in the southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don that his troops had seized during the uprising. An independent Russian broadcaster who asked Mr Prigozhin’s spokesman for comment was told he was unavailable but would soon begin responding to the press.
It was unclear how safe Mr Prigozhin would be in Belarus, given Mr Putin’s track record in pursuing those he believes betrayed him, both in Russia and abroad. As if to emphasize this point, Vesti Nedelu, the Kremlin’s signature weekly television show, aired an old clip on Sunday in which Putin said the one thing he could never forgive was “betrayal.” A guest on another prominent talk show called for the execution of Mr. Prigozhin and his top military commander.
Apart from that, Mr. Prigozhin’s ambitions as a military leader could clash with the goals of Mr. Lukashenko, who has been trying to keep his country out of the war.
“It will be dangerous for Lukashenko to have Wagner in Belarus,” said Dmitry Bolkunets, a Belarusian political scientist who taught at an elite Moscow university before becoming an opposition activist.
“Prigozhin is a Z patriot,” Mr Bolkunets said, referring to the letter that has come to symbolize the conflict in Ukraine. “He is a man who supports the war, who wants an empire, and Lukashenko is afraid of the empire.”
Wagner fighters poured out of Rostov-on-Don, the military center, to the sound of residents chanting the group’s name. It was unclear where they were going.
The group of mercenaries who led some of Russia’s most effective military campaigns in Ukraine said they were already faced with a choice: submit to and be controlled by the country’s defense ministry — an agency they openly despise — or disband. become.
Nikolai A. Pankov, Russia’s deputy defense minister, said on June 10 that the country’s numerous “volunteer regiments” should sign contracts with the ministry by the end of the month. Days later, Putin told a group of pro-military bloggers that contracts should be signed as soon as possible.
Mr Prigozhin had no intention of bowing to the Russian military commanders whom he had often accused of corruption and incompetence. “No one will sign the contracts,” he said a statement on June 14.
On Sunday, it was unclear whether that was true.
For Ukraine, while the upheaval could strain Russia’s war effort, analysts believed it would create fewer opportunities than if the Russian military had been forced to withdraw reserve units from the front to protect Moscow.
Attacks continued. Russian shelling hit a five-story apartment building in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region before dawn, killing a 44-year-old man and trapping a woman under the rubble, local officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine used the brief uprising to reiterate his message that his country is fighting on behalf of all of Europe against an unstable neighbor.
“Today the world saw that Russia’s bosses have no control over anything,” Zelensky said in a video address late Saturday. “Nothing at all. Complete chaos. Complete absence of any predictability.”
Mr. Zelensky mocked Mr. Putin without naming him.
“I’ll say it in Russian: the Kremlin guy is obviously very scared and probably hiding somewhere, without showing himself,” he said.
Reporting contributed by Julian E Barnes, Valerie Hopkins, Ivan Nechepurenko, Anton Trojanovsky, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, John Ismay, Alina Lobzina And Milan Mazeva.