Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, has recently made his first public comments since he sent his tanks toward Moscow over the weekend. He says he wasn’t trying to overthrow Vladimir Putin but was demonstrating against Russia’s plans to absorb his Wagner Group fighters into the military.
Putin called the actions by Prigozhin a “betrayal” and “treason.” He stated, “All those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable punishment. The armed forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders”.
Prigozhin is now in hiding, no doubt fearing for his safety—and perhaps, for his life.
He has released new audio claiming that two factors played into his decision to turn around his march on Moscow. He said he wanted to avoid Russian bloodshed and said the march was a demonstration of protest and not intended to overturn power in the country.
“Overnight, we have walked 780 kilometers (about 484 miles). Two hundred-something kilometers (about 125 miles) were left to Moscow,” Prigozhin claimed in the latest audio message, despite no evidence of his Wagner forces made it that close to the Russian capital. “Not a single soldier on the ground was killed.”
“We regret that we were forced to strikes [sic] on aircraft,” he said. “…but these aircraft dropped bombs and launched missile strikes.”
In his public remarks, Prigozhin directed his criticism at Russia’s military leaders, accusing them of mismanaging the war in Ukraine and undermining his private military company — the culmination of a months-long feud, coming just days before the Ministry of Defense was set to formally take over control of groups such as Wagner.
But, experts say, Russians will not soon forget—or forgive– the sight of mercenaries seizing military installations, capturing a city home to more than one million people, and marching to within striking distance of the Kremlin, prompting emergency “counter-terrorist” measures and a desperate attempt to thwart Wagner’s advance by tearing up the road into Moscow.
Mikhail Zygar, a Russian journalist and author of the book, “All the Kremlin’s Men,” told The New Yorker that Prigozhin, a former prisoner whose brand of populist “straight talk” has won him a massive following on social media — and who may have larger political ambitions — effectively exposed Putin as the sort of out-of-touch elite he used to decry. The student became the master, or at least threatened to.
“There came a moment when Prigozhin was no longer Putin’s puppet,” Zygar said. “Pinocchio became a real boy.”
Zygar added that, while the crisis was staved off following the intervention of Belarus President Alexsandr Lukashenko, the damage is done:
“Putin is weaker. I have the feeling he is not really running the country. Certainly, not the way he once did. He is still President, but all the different clans now have the feeling that ‘Russia after Putin’ is getting closer. Putin is still alive. He is still there in his bunker. But there is the growing feeling that he is a lame duck, and they have to prepare for Russia after Putin.”
Most experts agree that the fallout from this week’s dramatic events has barely started–for Prigozhin, for Putin, for Russia, and perhaps for the war in Ukraine.
