October 2, 1993. Yeltsin seizes power by bombing the Russian Parliament building. After almost two weeks of tension, there are 150 deaths, according to official figures. It was the first time in the new Russia that had risen from the ashes of the USSR that the struggle for power was settled using the army. Russia suffered a second experience a week ago.
June 23 and 24, 2023: the ghost army that Putin had been using for years to intervene in Donbass, Mali, the Central African Republic, Libya, Syria…
But this time the blood did not reach the Moskva River.
The chronicle of this mutiny begins that Friday the 23rd. The mercenaries of the Wagner Group, 25,000 according to their leader, the opaque, eloquent and now treacherous Yevgeny Prigozhin, take the city of Rostov-on-Don (1.1 million inhabitants, not a small town ) and are launched on Moscow.
But it could very well start much earlier. Prigozhin, who came out of the shadows in September, when he first acknowledged that it was he who controlled Wagner, had been at odds with the Defense Ministry and the army leadership for months. During the battle of Bakhmut, the longest and bloodiest of the conflict with Ukraine, he publishes critical messages, in text, audio and video, attacking the Ministry of Defense because, according to him, it does not provide its men with enough ammunition and equipment.
Over time he takes it to the personal terrain, and directs his attacks against the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu; and the chief of the Army General Staff, Valeri Guerásimov. Defense never came to the fore, and the Kremlin continued to wind it up. The law that punishes “discrediting” the army with between 5 and 15 years in prison has served to lame the political opposition and eliminate all protest against the war, but it does not seem designed for “one of our own”, a creditor in addition to the most notable victories on the battlefield.
“This can not end well. Aren’t they going to let such an extremist character get away with it?
His outbursts filled the camel’s back on May 5, 2023, when he published a video full of corpses and began to string together a more profane word than the previous one to accuse Shoigu and Gerasimov of being to blame for their deaths for not having given them ammunition.
The water was finally spilled this June. But it was not caused by another chapter of the fight with the Ministry of Defense. It was something more banal: money. On June 10, Shoigu ordered that all volunteer detachments, including mercenary groups, must sign a contract and join the Russian Armed Forces before July 1 with a contract legalizing their status. That would make them more effective and put them on a par with other professional soldiers. But he would keep them under a single command, thus Prigozhin would lose control.
He refused to sign and was warned by Russian authorities that the Wagner Group would be excluded from the military campaign in Ukraine, Deputy Andrei Kartapolov, who chairs the Duma Defense Committee, said on Thursday. “And that means that there would no longer be money, financial or material resources. And for Mr. Prigozhin, money is an important, perhaps decisive factor,” the MP continued.
On the night of the 23rd, the alarms go off. Prigozhin announces that he is up in arms, calls on the rest of the army to join him, and calls for the arrest of Shoigu and Gerasimov, for a missile attack on one of Wagner’s bases. Defense assures that it is a “provocation”.
The confusion must have been enormous. Several generals hastily post videos calling on the mercenaries to desist. Sergei Surovikin, known as “General Armageddon” and deputy commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine, is the first. When he addresses them, he looks exhausted: “You and I have come a long way. We are of the same blood. I ask you to stop.” The next morning, the Wagners are already in Rostov-on-Don, and Prigozhin announces that his men are heading to Moscow to capture his two most hated soldiers.
This is what happened. But it could have been more serious. Western intelligence sources cited by The Wall Street Journal say that Prigozhin originally planned to capture Shoigu and Gerasimov on a visit they were going to make to a border area with Ukraine, but the Russian secret services uncovered the conspiracy. Learning that his plans had leaked, Prigozhin improvised an alternative that for 24 hours kept Russia on edge.
When Putin appears on television calling his former ally a traitor without quoting him by name, tensions were already growing in Moscow. The images of Rostov, a thousand kilometers to the south, with soldiers and armored vehicles in the street are not reassuring, although many inhabitants of the southern city appear smiling and taking photos with the mercenaries.
“No one knows what will happen, they are protecting the city. The same thing is happening again,” says Olga, a resident of the Beliáyevo neighborhood, near where the army had deployed marksmen posted behind sandbags, referring to those days in 1993 when Yeltsin resolved the crisis with cannon fire. On the outskirts of Moscow they make ditches with excavators while Muscovites continue to be shocked by the events on WhatsApp and social networks. More than 10,000 troops are preparing to defend the capital.
The mediation of the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, turned out to be crucial in the end to end the crisis. As he himself explained, Prigozhin did not answer the phone and Putin was ready to “sweep” the mercenaries. He did speak with Lukashenko, between insults and swear words. But they managed to understand each other after three conversations, once it became clear that the confrontation did not benefit anyone. When the mercenary column was 200 kilometers from Moscow, Prigozhin ordered to turn around. Russia breathed a sigh of relief.
Prigozhin had not succeeded in getting other army units to join his cause. After all, he and Wagner were a product of the Kremlin and had no social or military base. For Putin, a crisis in the middle of the war with Ukraine, with the Kyiv counteroffensive underway, does not seem to be the most convenient. Let alone a confrontation with dead civilians on television. Trying to stop the mutineers, 13 pilots died, according to local media. Putin acknowledged the existence of dead “hero-pilots”, but without giving figures. The Kremlin agreed not to prosecute the insurgents and was content to accept that Prigozhin lives in exile in Belarus.
After each crisis, the media try to see who is the winner (it seems more understandable if everything looks like a football match). After the Wagner coup, Lukashenko will come out reinforced before his allies. But Putin also wants to win. A few days after the rebellious tanks turned around, the Russian president appeared at various events thanking the military or greeting a cheering crowd, in an attempt to reassert his leadership, regain his agenda and convey calm.
The Kremlin has tried to minimize the impact of what happened for the future of Russia. “It is one more of the speculations” that will appear about these events, said spokesman Dimitri Peskov, referring to the possible arrest of Surovikin because, as The New York Times published, he was aware of Wagner’s plans and did not communicate it.
The rebellion (despite the terror that the word may cause) for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was simply “a minor matter,” he said at a virtual press conference on Friday. In it he warned the West not to believe that Putin’s grip on power has weakened. Russia will emerge “stronger and more resilient,” he assured. “If they doubt it in the West, that’s their problem,” he added, as if that didn’t matter to him.
