US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the insurrection in Russia shows « cracks » in President Vladimir Putin’s role as the country’s leader.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that the brief and chaotic insurrection in Russia led by the Wagner paramilitary group shows « cracks » in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s role as a leader of the country.
« This is just an added chapter to a very, very bad book that Putin has written for Russia. But what’s so striking about it is, it’s internal, » Blinken told CNN’s Dana Bash on « State of the Union, » describing the situation as « extraordinary. »
« The fact that you have from within someone directly questioning Putin’s authority, directly questioning the premises that – upon which he launched this aggression against Ukraine. That, in and of itself, is something very, very powerful. It adds cracks. Where those go, when they get there, too soon to say, but it clearly raises new questions that Putin has to deal with, » he said.
The comments from the nation’s top diplomat underscore the short-lived intensity of a crisis that started when Yevegeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, marched his fighters toward Moscow, taking control of Russian military facilities along the way.
Prigozhin on Friday openly accused Russia’s military of attacking a Wagner camp and killing a « huge amount » of his men.
