The Wagner forces’ largely unopposed, rapid advance exposed vulnerabilities in Russia’s security and military forces as it also pulled some of the country’s best forces from the battlefield in the war with Ukraine.
The rebellious mercenary soldiers who briefly took over a Russian military headquarters on an ominous march toward Moscow were gone Sunday, but the short-lived revolt has weakened President Vladimir Putin just as his forces are facing a fierce counteroffensive in Ukraine.
Under terms of the agreement that ended the crisis, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led his Wagner troops in the failed uprising, will go into exile in Belarus but will not face prosecution.
But it was unclear what would ultimately happen to him and his forces. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who brokered the deal, released few details. Neither Prigozhin nor Putin has been heard from, and top Russian military leaders have also remained silent.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the weekend’s events as “extraordinary,” recalling that 16 months ago Putin appeared poised to seize the capital of Ukraine and now he has had to defend Moscow from forces led by his onetime protege.
“I think we’ve seen more cracks emerge in the Russian façade,” Blinken said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“It is too soon to tell exactly where they go and when they get there, but certainly we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead.”
It was not yet clear what the fissures opened by the 24-hour rebellion would mean for the war in Ukraine. But it resulted in some of the best forces fighting for Russia being pulled from the battlefield: the Wagner troops, who had shown their effectiveness in scoring the Kremlin’s only land victory in months, in Bakhmut, and Chechen soldiers sent to stop them on the approach to Moscow.
The Wagner forces’ largely unopposed, rapid advance also exposed vulnerabilities in Russia’s security and military forces. The mercenary soldiers were reported to have downed several helicopters and a military communications plane. The Defense Ministry has not commented.
“I honestly think that Wagner probably did more damage to Russian aerospace forces in the past day than the Ukrainian offensive has done in the past three weeks,” Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the CNA research group, said in a podcast.
