Editorial: Kremlin trembles

The armed rebellion by Yevgeny Prigozhin fizzled out hours after the militia claimed to have taken control of Russian city Rostov-on-Don

If the attempted coup in Russia by a private militia raised hopes of an end to the vexed war in Ukraine, it did not take much time for these hopes to be dashed. There seems to be no end in sight to the sufferings of the Ukrainian people as war clouds continue to hover over the eastern European nation invaded by Russia nearly 16 months ago. The armed rebellion by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary group Wagner and once a confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin, fizzled out hours after the militia claimed to have taken control of Russian city Rostov-on-Don, which houses the country’s military headquarters, and vowed to march towards Moscow in what it claimed a battle for justice. The unprecedented mutiny by Wagner, comprising over 25,000 soldiers loyal to Prigozhin, rattled the Kremlin and made Putin look vulnerable. But the uprising unraveled within 24 hours, following a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. As a result, the rebel leader halted the march to Moscow and ordered the mercenaries to retreat to their field camps in Ukraine “to avoid shedding Russian blood”. As per the negotiated deal, Russia dropped charges against him, provided security guarantees for Wagner troops and allowed him to leave for Belarus. The brief revolt has turned out to be a public relations disaster for the Kremlin, threatening both national stability and the war effort. It has exposed the failures of the Russian military in the ongoing war.

The existence of private mercenary groups backed by the military is a phenomenon unique to Russia. Prigozhin, a convict who had spent several years in jail, earned the trust of Putin through catering business and then went on to raise a private militia which carried out many dirty tasks that fall outside the purview of law. His mercenary group quickly earned a reputation for ruthlessness and took part in fighting in Syria and Libya, while building political influence for the Kremlin in countries like the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali and Sudan. In the recent months, he began to openly criticise the Russian military leadership for its failures in Ukraine war, targeting the Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and emerged as a public figure, boasting that his forces could do the job far better than the Russian regulars. He recruited thousands of convicts from Russian prisons and threw them into the bloody fight over the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, with the ruthlessness and indifference to human life that he attributed to Russian commanders. The latest mutiny, though short-lived, has punctured the aura of invincibility surrounding Putin. By making a deal with Prigozhin only hours after threatening to crush him, Putin reinforced the reality that he no longer has exclusive control over the use of force on Russian territory.

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