Russia put the genie back in the bottle, right?

There is nothing to see here, now please move on.

Just over a week after the 36-hour insurrection by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group mercenaries, this appears to be the line taken by the Kremlin, its propagandists and supporters.

The politicians and officials who remained ominously silent and kept their heads down as the shock rebellion unfolded are now rallying, flocking to President Vladimir Putin and praising his shrewdness, while seeking to trivialize Wagner’s military contribution to the war against Ukraine.

“If there had been people like Putin at the head of the state in 1917 and 1991, there would have been no revolution and no collapse of the USSR,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma. Putin has emerged even stronger, he opined on Telegram.

Meanwhile, Andrey Kartapolov, chairman of the Duma defense committee, was quoted by state news agency TASS as saying Wagner’s absence from the battlefield would have no adverse effects. “There is no threat at all with regard to a drop in combat potential, both in the medium and long-term perspective,” he said. And the state television channel Rossiya-1 has similarly been downplaying the paramilitary group’s effectiveness on the battlefield, calling its role in the war an exaggerated “constructed myth.”

Putin’s propaganda machine has thus found its place and its voice once again, having been completely touched by the armed rebellion created by a convict turned caterer turned warlord. And the present-day czar of Russia has become visible once more, now that the immediate danger has apparently passed.

This is a pattern we have seen repeated over and over again by Putin, disappearing whenever serious problems arise, be they natural or man-made disasters. For example, he was largely absent as the pandemic unfolded, as Moscow struggled to slow its spread and St. Petersburg braced for a surge in cases. Instead, he secluded himself at his Novo-Ogaryovo estate on the outskirts of Moscow.

Similarly, in 2000, Putin was vacationing at his residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi when the Kursk nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea. He finally met with the relatives of the 118 victims when a media storm erupted, but the meeting did not go well, as he was accused of inaction and the military accused of incompetence.

Separately, in 2018, Putin was criticized for a slow response to a massive fire at a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, which killed at least 64 people, 41 of them children, and grieving families accused him of repeating his Kursk disappearing act.

And now, with the Prigozhin rebellion over, in recent days Putin has apparently appeared in Dagestan, mingling with an adoring crowd in what Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described as an “astonishing display of support and happiness”. Guard, thanking them for putting down the riot and saving Russia from chaos.

The message being conveyed is that Putin is in control; that he never lost control, he is loved, and he acted prudently, allowing talks to conclude the riot without further bloodshed and then offering Prigozhin a way out into exile in neighboring Belarus.

The consistency here is in stark contrast to the confusion when the insurrection began, from the initial stunned silence of state broadcasters, which had no instructions from the Kremlin, to the subsequent mixed messages, including the claim that the West must be behind it all. And as Prigozhin headed toward the Russian capital, business jets began to depart from Moscow, including those carrying oligarchs Arkady Rotenberg, Vladimir Potanin and Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov, according to Vazhniye Istorii research website. Manturov had long planned a weekend in Turkey, friends said.

The confusion grew even further afield, with regional governors unsure what to do or expect. And the first sign of any direction finally came about 24 hours after Sergey Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, instructed governors and regional leaders to register public support for the Russian leader.

and they did. Although the statement of the head of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, was surprisingly equivocal: “You know that our people care about their loved ones equally… regardless of whether they are on the list of the Armed Forces… or Wagner. We are looking at all their ups and downs equally,” he said.

But now the genie is back in the bottle. Or is that it? The questions persist.

How exactly was it that a motley crew of mercenaries were able to mount the challenge they did? How were they allowed to seize control of Rostov, a key logistics hub and military headquarters, and then advance down the M4 highway, only to face opposition around Voronezh, which is a six-hour drive from the Russian capital, and still manage to reach 240 kilometers from the outskirts of Moscow? Why did the armed forces, security services and the National Guard react so slowly? And how come the security services, including the GRU military intelligence agency, which has close ties to Wagner, don’t realize what Prigozhin was planning?

Was it incompetence or treason? Probably both. And that, no doubt, is what Putin and his loyalists are trying to weigh as they trace the ranks of the security services, the armed forces and government technocrats. Who can be trusted? Who was wrong? Who was traitor? Most observers don’t expect a quick mass purge (Putin might not be strong enough for that) and there are already mixed signals about who is in and who is out. Kremlinology is a fool’s game.

However, until now, some Western media outlets have said that General Sergei Surovikin, deputy commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, has been detained. And according to Alexei Venediktov, former director of the independent Ekho Moskvy radio station that was shut down by the authorities last year, Surovikin and his close lieutenants have not been in contact with their families for several days.

But pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov believes Surovikin is still destined to replace Valery Gerasimov as chief of the General Staff, which was one of Prigozhin’s key demands. Markov also tipped Alexei Dyumin, governor of the strategically important Tula region and a former top security official, to succeed Sergei Shoygu as defense minister. “But this will not happen immediately, so there are no thoughts that Shoygu and Gerasimov were eliminated at the request of the rebel,” he said. wrote.

Should that happen, it would mark a significant victory for Prigozhin, who has called for the removal of Gerasimov and Shoygu for months. Surovikin and Prigozhin have reportedly been close since 2015, when they were both active in Syria. And it has been noted on the Meduza news site that both Dyumin and Dmitry Mirono, another rising star and former head of the Yaroslavl region, have quietly supported Prigozhin.

So is the genie really back in the bottle? Not likely. And Russia’s near future seems destined to see more witch-hunts and rumors, more shoving and infighting as factions and clans ponder how to ensure they don’t fall victim to Putin’s end game, for long or short. to be.