October 2, 1993. Yeltsin seizes power by bombing the Russian Parliament building. After almost two weeks of tension, there are 150 dead, according to official figures. It was the first time in the new Russia that arose from the ashes of the USSR that the struggle for power was resolved 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 the Donbass, Mali, Central African Republic, Libya, Syria, revolts.
But this time the blood did not reach the Moskva River.
The chronicle of this riot begins on Friday the 23rd. The mercenaries of the Wagner Group, 25,000 according to their leader, the opaque, long-tongued and now traitor Yevgeny Prigozhin, take the city of Rostov-on-Don (1.1 million inhabitants, it’s not a village) and they launch themselves over Moscow.
But it could very well start much earlier. Prigojin, who came out of the shadows in September, when he acknowledged for the first time that he was the one controlling Wagner, had been facing the Ministry of Defense and the leadership of the Army 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 for, he says, not providing its men with enough ammunition and equipment.
Over time he takes it to personal ground, and directs his attacks against the Minister of Defense, Serguei Xoigú; and the Chief of Staff of the Army, Valeri Guerassimov. Defensa never responded to the attacks, and the Kremlin continued to rope him in. The law that punishes “discrediting” the army with between 5 and 15 years in prison has served to flatten the political opposition and eliminate all protest against the war, but it does not seem designed for “one of ours”, a creditor of the most notable victories of the war.
“This can’t end well. Are they not going to let such an extremist character get away with it?” asked not a few loyal Russian followers of Putin.
His outbursts came to a head on May 5, 2023, when he posted a video full of corpses and began chaining a string of words more rude than the previous one to accuse Shoigu and Gerassimov of being guilty of their deaths for not to have given them ammunition.
The water finally spilled this June. But it was not caused by any other chapter of the pulse with the Ministry of Defense. It was a little more banal: money. On June 10, Xoigu ordered that all volunteer detachments, including mercenary groups, must sign a contract and join the Russian Armed Forces before July 1 with a contract that legalizes their status. This would make them more effective and put them on a par with other professional soldiers. But it would keep them under a single command, with which Prigozhin would lose control.
He refused to sign and the Russian authorities warned him that the Wagner Group would be excluded from the military campaign in Ukraine, said deputy Andrei Kartapolov, who chairs the Defense Committee in the Duma, on Thursday. “And that means there would be no more money, no financial or material resources. And for Mr. Prigozhin, money is an important factor, perhaps decisive,” continued the parliamentarian.
On the night of the 23rd, the alarms go off. Prigojin announces that he is taking up arms, calls on the rest of the army to join him and calls for the arrest of Shoigu and Guerassimov, for a missile attack on one of Wagner’s bases. Defense claims that it is a “provocation”.
The bewilderment must have been enormous. Several generals are quick to post videos asking the mercenaries to desist. Sergey Surovikin, known as “General Armageddon” and deputy commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, is the first. When he addresses them, he seems exhausted: “You and I have come a long way. We are of the same blood. I ask you to stop.” The following morning, the Wagners are already in Rostov-on-Don, and Prigojin announces that his men are heading to Moscow to capture their two most hated soldiers.
This is what happened. But it could have been worse. Western intelligence sources quoted by The Wall Street Journal say that Prigozhin originally planned to capture Shoigu and Gerassimov during a visit they were going to make to a border area with Ukraine, but the Russian secret services uncovered the conspiracy. When he learned that his plans had been leaked, Prigozhin improvised an alternative that he kept for 24 hours with Russia in his heart.
When Putin appeared on television calling his former ally a traitor without naming him, tensions were already rising in Moscow. Images of Rostov, a thousand kilometers to the south, with military and armored personnel carriers in the streets are not reassuring, even if many residents of the southern city appear smiling and taking pictures of 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 snipers behind sandbags, referring to those days in 1993 when Yeltsin solved the pipeline crisis On the outskirts of Moscow they are digging ditches with bulldozers while on WhatsApp and social networks Muscovites continue to be frightened by the events. More than 10,000 troops are ready to defend the capital.
The mediation of the president of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, was ultimately crucial in ending the crisis. As he himself explained, Prigozhin did not answer the phone and Putin was ready to “sweep out” 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 was not benefiting anyone. When the column of mercenaries was 200 kilometers from Moscow, Prigozhin ordered to turn around. Russia breathed a sigh of relief.
Prigozhin had failed to get other army units to join his cause. After all, he and Wagner were a product of the Kremlin and lacked a social or military base. For Putin, a crisis in the middle of the war with Ukraine, with Kiev’s counter-offensive underway, does not seem to be the most convenient. Much less a confrontation with dead civilians on television. Trying to stop the rioters, 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 allow Prigozhin to live in exile in Belarus.
After every crisis, we in the media try to see who is the winner (it seems more understandable if everything looks like a football game). After Wagner’s uproar, Lukashenko will come out strengthened in front of his allies. But Putin also wants to emerge victorious. A few days after the Levantine tanks turned around, the Russian president appeared at several events thanking the military or greeting a cheering crowd, in an attempt to reassert his leadership, reclaim his agenda and convey calm.
The Kremlin has tried to minimize the impact of what happened for the future of Russia. “It’s one more of the speculations” that will appear about these facts, said the spokesman Dmitri Peskov referring to the possible arrest of Surovikin because, according to The New York Times, he was involved in the Wagner plans and did not communicate it.
The rebellion (despite the terror the word can 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 resistant”, he assured. “If the West doubts it, it’s their problem”, he added, as if that didn’t matter to him.
