The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, described this Saturday as a “stab in the back against our country and against our people” the military rebellion of the Wagner Group, which hours later ended in withdrawal, and assured that everyone who takes up arms against the Army is a “traitor”.
The controversial businessman Yevgueni Prigozhin, founder and head of this private army of mercenaries, was considered a man close to the head of the Kremlin. Also originally from St. Petersburg, he was nicknamed “the Kremlin cook” in the press because of the contracts of the Russian presidency with his catering company.
But now he is leading a military rebellion against the high command of the Russian Army, especially against the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov.
His fighters are in the city of Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia, and in a video posted on Telegram on Saturday morning, he assured that he controlled the army’s High Command in the city.
In a nearly six-minute address to the nation broadcast on Russian public television, Vladimir Putin called the uprising led by his former acquaintance a “betrayal.” Without quoting him, he said that “the one who organized and prepared the military rebellion, the one who raised arms against his comrades, betrayed Russia and will answer for this.”
Putin compared the actions of Prigozhin and his private military company Wagner to a “blow in the back” and the events of 1917, when the Bolshevik Revolution changed Russia and the world.
The Russian president said that that year, due to “intrigues, disputes, politicking behind the backs of the army and the people,” Russia was robbed of victory in World War I, resulting in a civil war. And he vowed to prevent something similar from happening more than a century later.
The Russian leader said that he will do everything possible to protect Russia and assured that “decisive actions” will be taken to stabilize the situation in Rostov-on-Don.
The Reuters agency, citing a Russian security source, reported that the militants also controlled all military installations in the city of Voronezh, a provincial capital 500 kilometers south of Moscow.
Putin contextualized this crisis within the conflict with Ukraine and the West. “The entire Western military, economic and information machine is directed against us. We fight for the life and safety of our people, for our sovereignty and independence, for the right to be and remain Russia, a state with a thousand-year history “, he explained.
“This fight, when the fate of our people is decided, demands unity of all forces, we must put aside everything that weakens us, everything that our external enemy can and does use to destroy us from within,” he added. “Russia is fighting for its future, so any internal disturbances are a deadly threat to our state, to us as a nation,” the president stressed.
On Friday Prigozhin asserted that Wagner’s camps in the rear of the Ukrainian front had been attacked with missiles, blaming the top commanders of the Russian army. He promised reprisals, said that he had 25,000 men and that he was going to stop Gerasimov and Shoigu, very close to Putin.
The Defense Ministry denied Prigozhin’s accusations, calling them a “provocation”. Subsequently, the Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly KGB) opened a criminal case against the oligarch for military rebellion. The General Prosecutor’s Office confirmed this and stressed that this crime entails a sentence of between 12 and 20 years in prison in Russia.
Defense, the FSB and several generals have asked Wagner’s mercenaries not to follow Prigozhin’s orders and even to arrest him.
The Ministry of Defense addressed Wagner’s fighters on Saturday and told them that they had been “deceived in a criminal adventure” to “participate in an armed uprising.” And he guaranteed them safety if they returned to their barracks.
“Many of your colleagues have already realized the mistake of requesting help to guarantee the return to permanent deployment points safely. We ask you to be prudent and to contact representatives of the Russian Ministry of Defense or from law enforcement agencies,” he said in a statement.
