Putin says aborted rebellion played into Russia’s enemies’ hands

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday criticized the organizers of a weekend revolt, the most serious threat yet to his power, as traitors who played into the hands of the Ukrainian government and its allies.

Speaking sternly and looking tired in a five-minute television address around midnight, Putin tried to project stability. He tried to strike a balance between criticizing the perpetrators of the uprising in order to avoid another crisis and not antagonizing the bulk of the mercenaries and their hardline supporters, some of whom are outraged by the Kremlin’s handling of the situation. .

Putin, whose troops stretch thin in front of a ukrainian counteroffensive, praised the rank and file mercenaries for not letting the situation escalate into “major bloodshed.” And he said the nation had held together, even though there were localized signs of support for the uprising.

Earlier in the day, the head of the mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led the rebellion, defended his short-lived insurrection. He again mocked the Russian military, but said he was not looking to stage a coup against Putin. On Friday, Prigozhin had called for an armed rebellion to overthrow the military leadership.

Putin’s speech was announced by his spokesman in advance and heralded by Russian state media as something that would “define the fate of Russia.” In fact, the direction did not produce innovative developments.

Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst, called the speech weak. In a Facebook post, he said it was a sign that Putin is “very dissatisfied with how he looks in this whole story and is trying to rectify the situation.”

He Kremlin it later showed Putin meeting with senior security, law enforcement and military officials, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whom the uprising had sought to oust. Putin thanked members of his team for his work over the weekend, signifying his support for the embattled Shoigu. Earlier, the authorities released a video of Shoigu reviewing troops in Ukraine.

Putin, who declined to name Prigozhin, said the riot organizers had tried to force the group’s soldiers to “shoot their own.”

He said that “enemies of Russia” expected the mutiny to divide and weaken Russia, “but they miscalculated.”

Western officials have gone mum on their public comments on the riot, with President Joe Biden saying Monday that the United States and NATO were not involved. Speaking at the White House, Biden said he was wary of public speaking because he did not want to give “Putin any excuse to blame this on the West and blame this on NATO.”

“We made it clear that we were not involved, we had nothing to do with it,” he said.

Prigozhin said he had been acting to prevent the destruction of Wagner, his private military company. “We started our march because of an injustice,” he said in an 11-minute statement Monday, without giving details of where he was or what his plans were.

The injustice was apparently a government order requiring Wagner’s soldiers, if they want to continue fighting, to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense by July 1, potentially disbanding the group despite its successes in the field. battle in Ukraine. Prigozhin also accused the Russian army of attacking his troops, which led to his departure.

The enmity between the wagner group leader and warlord has festered throughout the war, erupting into mutiny when mercenaries left Ukraine to seize a military headquarters in the southern Russian city of Rostov. They rolled seemingly unopposed for hundreds of miles toward Moscow before turning around after less than 24 hours on Saturday.

The Kremlin said it had made a deal so that Prigozhin move to Belarus and receive amnesty, along with his soldiers. There was no confirmation of his whereabouts on Monday.

Prigozhin bragged that his march was a “master class” in how the Russian military should have carried out the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He also mocked the military for security violations that allowed Wagner to march 780 kilometers. (500 miles) towards Moscow without meeting resistance.

It remained unclear what would ultimately happen to Prigozhin and his forces under the deal reportedly brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Prigozhin said Lukashenko proposed to find a way to allow Wagner “to continue his work in a legal jurisdiction.” That suggested that Prigozhin could maintain military strength from him, though it was not clear which jurisdiction he was referring to.

Although the riot was brief, it was not without blood. Russian media reported that Wagner’s forces shot down several military helicopters and a communications plane, killing at least 15. Prigozhin regretted attacking the plane, but said they were bombing his convoys.

Russian media reported that a criminal case against Prigozhin has not been closed, despite earlier statements by the Kremlin, and some Russian lawmakers have called for his head. In his speech on Monday, Putin did not repeat the threats he had made on Saturday to punish the leaders of the riot.

Andrei Gurulev, a retired general and current lawmaker who has clashed with the mercenary leader, said Prigozhin and his right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, deserve “a bullet to the head.”

And Nikita Yurefev, a St. Petersburg city councilor, said he filed a request with Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, asking who would be punished for the rebellion.

Russian media reported that Wagner’s offices in several Russian cities had reopened on Monday and the company had resumed recruiting.

In at least a superficial return to normality, Moscow’s mayor announced the end of the “anti-terrorism regime” imposed in the capital on Saturday, as troops and armored vehicles set up checkpoints on the outskirts and authorities tore up roads leading to the city.

For months Prigozhin had criticized Shoigu and the chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov with profanity-filled insults, accusing them of not providing their troops with enough ammunition during the fighting for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.

Prigozhin said that most of his fighters refused to come under the command of the Defense Ministry. He said Wagner had planned to deliver the military equipment he was using to Ukraine on June 30 after withdrawing from Ukraine and meeting in Rostov, but came under fire.

Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said on Twitter that Prigozhin’s mutiny was “not a bid for power or an attempt to seize the Kremlin” but a desperate move amid his growing estrangement from the military leadership.

While Prigozhin could get out of the crisis alive, he has no political future in Russia under Putin, Stanovaya said.

It was unclear what the fissures opened by the 24-hour rebellion would mean for the war in Ukraine, where Western officials say Russian troops are in low morale. Wagner’s forces were key to Russia’s only land victory in months, at Bakhmut.

The UK Defense Ministry said on Monday that Ukraine had “gained momentum” in his push around Bakhmut, advancing to the north and south of the town. Ukrainian forces claimed to have retaken Rivnopil, a village in southeastern Ukraine that has seen heavy fighting.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday after visiting troops in the war-torn Donetsk region that his army had advanced there as well as Zaporizhzhia. “Today, our warriors have advanced in all directions, and this is a happy day,” he said in his evening address, without elaborating.

Events over the weekend show that the war is “breaking down Russia’s political system,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.

“The monster that Putin created with Wagner, the monster is biting him now,” Borrell said. “The monster is acting against its creator.”

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Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jill Lawless in London contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine-war