By Esteban Cabrera
There are no causes without effects; the revolt led by the mercenary group leader, Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin, was not a deliberate case but the culmination of internal division in the Russian commandos. Prigozhin accused the Russian army of carrying out deadly attacks on the camps of its fighters behind the Ukrainian front and called for an uprising against the military high command.
What reading can be given to this act of rebellion that reached the point of threatening Putin’s regime, marching alongside 25,000 mercenaries who had already taken control of a military base in the city of Rostov-on-Don, near the border with Ukraine, and they reached Lipetsk located only about 300 kilometers from the Russian capital?
It is something that was seen coming, an escalation of tensions between the Russian president and the leader of Warner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, after months of reckless statements that touched the most sensitive fibers of the Russian army and ended in a direct accusation of having staged an attack on a rearguard commando of the Wagner group in the war in Ukraine that sparked an insurrection that sought to overthrow the Russian military commanders in Moscow.
In the threats, Yevgeny Prigozhin revealed in a video that he posted something everyone suspected: “the war against Ukraine, the invasion, was launched under pretenses. There was no credible threat that Ukraine or NATO were planning planes against Russia.” That is the opposite of what Russia has been saying, and it is a very difficult issue for Putin because there is no way to hide it anymore.
The second aspect that deserves analysis is that Prigozhin’s forces advanced into Russia without any military confrontation, taking two major cities and reaching 300 km from Moscow and facing no opposition from the Russian army. This makes it clear that Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner paramilitary group are not alone and seriously question Putin’s armor within the Russian military, presenting it for the first time in vulnerability, which must be seriously ravaging the dictator.
Putin called Prigozhin’s actions a “coup for Russia.” The Defense Ministry, led by Putin’s staunch ally Sergei Shoigu, was silent during the events over the weekend.
Finally, Yevgeny Prigozhin declared that he was halting his “march for justice” to Moscow after an agreement freed him and his mercenaries from facing criminal charges. The deal also exiled Prigozhin to Belarus.
“We will punish the ‘betrayal’, whose rebellion against the Russian military command means a ‘deadly threat’ and the risk of civil war,” Vladimir Putin said on Saturday. Who still tries to hide the criminal invasion of Ukraine by calling it a “Special Military Operation.”
In European circles of opinion, they take it for granted that the conflict between the mercenary Prigozhin and the Russian military high command does not end with the mercenary warlord’s departure from military theaters and that it is only the tip of the iceberg. It is believed that there is a fundamental evil in the Russian army organizations characterized by general disgust, which would explain why no one confronted Prigozhin on his way to Moscow and made Putin back down on the criminal prosecution against the mercenary and his group, authorized that he went into exile in Belarus (Belarus).
