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A short-lived revolt by a rebellious Russian mercenary commander ended with his troops beating a retreat, but the extraordinary challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s two-decade hold on power could have long-term consequences for his rule and his war in Ukraine.
Putin’s image as a tough leader had already been badly bruised by the Ukraine war, which has dragged on for 16 months and claimed huge numbers of Russian troops. Saturday’s march toward Moscow by forces under the command of his onetime protege, Yevgeny Prigozhin, exposed further weaknesses, analysts said.
It also meant some of the best forces fighting for Russia in Ukraine were pulled from that battlefield: Prigozhin’s own Wagner troops and Chechen ones sent to stop them.
After calling for an armed rebellion aimed at ousting Russia’s defense minister, Prigozhin and his fighters appeared to seize control of the Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don that oversee fighting in Ukraine.
They were halted only by a deal to send Prigozhin to neighboring Belarus, which has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Charges against him of mounting an armed rebellion will be dropped, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, and Prigozhin ordered his troops back to their field camps.
The government also said it would not prosecute Wagner fighters who took part, while those who did not join in would be offered contracts by the Defense Ministry.
Though Putin had vowed earlier to punish those behind the armed uprising, Peskov defended the reversal, saying Putin’s “highest goal” was “to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results.”
That amnesty stands in contrast to the fines and jail sentences Russian authorities have meted out to thousands of people who have criticized the war, even obliquely.
And while it ended the immediate crisis, it may have set in motion a longer-term one, analysts and observers said.
“For a dictatorship built on the idea of unchallenged power, this was an extreme humiliation, and it’s hard to see the genie of doubt ever being forced back into the bottle,” said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St.
