Top Russian officials rallied around President Vladimir Putin in a clear sign of support for the Kremlin on Monday, two days after paramilitary Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin seized the strategic city of Rostov-on-Don and began an advance toward the capital.
“We need to act together, as one team, and maintain the unity of all forces,” Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said in a televised address. However, the crisis is far from over: Mishustin admitted that the apparent attempted coup was a direct challenge to Russia’s stability. In a late Monday speech, Putin repeated unsubstantiated neo-Nazi allegations and appealed to “those who were deceptively pulled into the criminal adventure”—likely, though not explicitly, acknowledging Wagner Group fighters.
The mayhem began late last Friday, when Prigozhin accused Russian troops of killing Wagner forces in a targeted missile strike. Prigozhin has worked with Kremlin officials to forward a Russian victory in Ukraine, but he has also been a thorn in Putin’s side. On Friday, his criticisms escalated; he accused the Russian leader of lying to top officials in February 2022, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, and marched toward Moscow with dozens of tanks and fighting vehicles in tow.
“At the very least, that Prigozhin’s army was able to travel hundreds of miles unhindered shows that the Kremlin lacks the wherewithal to put down a domestic rebellion, especially when its best troops are fighting in Ukraine,” Russia expert Lucian Kim, who formerly reported in Moscow, argued in Foreign Policy.
Prigozhin went even further the following day, calling for Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s and army chief Valery Gerasimov’s removal. Although Russian authorities released a video of Shoigu on Monday—his first public appearance since the attempted insurrection—it is unclear if the Kremlin will concede to Prigozhin’s demands.
Through a deal negotiated by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko on Saturday, Wagner fighters will be offered immunity if they withdraw from their posts. Prigozhin himself is set to fly to Belarus this week, choosing exile in exchange for Russia dropping criminal charges. However, the Kremlin announced on Monday that it will continue investigating the insurrection. Prigozhin has denied that he tried to overthrow Putin but doubled down on his criticism of the Russian military.
On Monday, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top envoy, said Russia’s military looked fragile. “It’s not a good thing to see that a nuclear power like Russia can go into a phase of political instability,” he said. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that Russian infighting could leave the country vulnerable to Ukrainian advances. “For a long time, Russia used propaganda to mask its weakness and the stupidity of its government,” Zelensky tweeted. “And now there is so much chaos that no lie can hide it.”