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China’s reaction was muted through the weekend to the internal crisis facing Russian President Vladimir Putin, following a brief rebellion by Wagner Group mercenaries who brought an unprecedented threat to the Russian leader’s longtime grip on power.
The communist party-ruled government in Beijing, which has drawn increasingly close to Mr. Putin amid his nearly 16-month invasion of Ukraine, has not publicly commented on the short-lived but intense insurrection that could have long-term consequences for the war and the Russian leader’s two-decade hold on power.
While Western media outlets have devoted feverish coverage of the Russias developments since Friday, the English-language versions of China Daily and People’s Daily — two of the Chinese Communist Party’s primary news operations — carried almost no mention of the developments on Saturday and Sunday.
The People’s Daily Online linked to an article by Xinhua, the Chinese state-run news wire, which summarized the friction between Mr. Putin and Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who said Saturday that he had called off the group’s rebellion to “avoid “shedding Russian blood.
