Global Courant
According to Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is a “dead man walking” after leading a failed uprising against Vladimir Putin.
The weekend’s armed uprising by Prigozhin, a former Putin ally who founded the private militia group Wagner, was widely seen as the biggest threat to the Russian president’s 23-year hold on power. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the episode exposed “cracks” in the Kremlin that had not been seen before.
Prigozhin is “sort of a dead man walking at this point,” Bremmer said on “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday. “I would be very surprised if he is still with us in a few months.”
This Prigozhin-led insurgency was unprecedented territory for Putin, who until then had been able to quickly crush the occasional unarmed protest. Over the weekend, the Wagner mutineers came within 125 miles of the capital Moscow before their leader made the abrupt announcement to abort the mission.
Anyone who believes that Putin is suddenly on the verge of leaving power must also recognize that we are not there.
Ian Bremmer
chairman, Eurasia Group
“Putin has imprisoned and killed people for much less than what Prigozhin did to him,” Bremmer added. “It is inconceivable to me that Putin would allow him to live longer than absolutely necessary.”
The march of the Wagner fighters on Moscow caused the Kremlin to rush to protect the capital after the mercenaries reportedly took control of the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don within hours.
Rostov is strategically symbolic as the seat of the Southern Military District for the Russian military, a logistics and command hub for Putin’s war against Ukraine.
Wagner mercenaries patrol the center of Rostov-on-Don – a hub for the Russian campaign in Ukraine – after it took over key facilities on June 24, 2023 as part of an armed uprising.
Stringer | Afp | Getty Images
As part of the deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin was to go into exile in Belarus in exchange for calling off the uprising. The Kremlin agreed to drop the criminal case against Prigozhin, according to the state-controlled outlet TASS.
“Obviously this shows a level of unprecedented weakness for President Putin,” Bremmer said.
“But at the same time, while Putin was being tested unprecedentedly, there was not a single high-level defector from the Russian military, from the Russian government or among the Russian oligarchs — so anyone who believes that Putin is is suddenly on the verge of death.” leaving power, must also recognize that we are not where we are,” he added.
The bitter feud between Prigozhin and the Moscow military establishment escalated in recent weeks after the Kremlin wanted all private mercenaries to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry by July 1. Prigozhin had refused.
The standoff came out when Prigozhin launched an armed uprising on Friday after accusing the Russian army of shooting at his mercenaries.
“Prigozhin’s goal was to get Putin’s attention and impose a discussion on the terms of preserving his activities — a defined role, security and funding,” wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. , on Twitter.
“These were not demands for a government overthrow; they were a desperate attempt to salvage the enterprise, in the hope that Prigozhin’s merits in taking Bakhmut would be taken into account … and that the concerns would receive Putin’s serious attention. draw,” she added.
The Wagner fighters were a major force in Putin’s war against Ukraine and were instrumental in the capture of the eastern city of Bakhmut.
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