Putin's Response to the Wagner Group Uprising: A Critical Analysis

Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the nation on Monday in response to the weekend revolt led by the Wagner Group, a private military company. His stern speech aimed to project stability and balance the need to criticize the uprising’s perpetrators and not antagonize the bulk of the mercenaries and their hardline supporters. The Kremlin’s response can be seen as an attempt to avert further crisis, but the address did not yield groundbreaking developments.

The Wagner Group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had called for an armed rebellion to oust the military leadership on Friday, with his forces marching unopposed for hundreds of miles toward Moscow before turning around after less than 24 hours on Saturday. Putin declined to name Prigozhin in his address, instead blaming “Russia’s enemies” for hoping the mutiny would divide and weaken the nation. President Joe Biden said the U.S. and NATO were not involved, and Western officials have been muted in their public comments on the mutiny. Prigozhin defended his short-lived insurrection, saying he had been acting to prevent the destruction of his private military company.

He mocked Russia’s military for security breaches that allowed Wagner to march 500 miles toward Moscow without facing resistance, and boasted that his march was a “master class” on how the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine should have been carried out. The Kremlin reportedly made a deal for Prigozhin to move to Belarus and receive amnesty, along with his soldiers, and the mutiny was not bloodless, with several military helicopters and a communications plane being shot down by Wagner forces. Prigozhin expressed regret for attacking the aircraft but said they were bombing his convoys. It remains unclear what will happen to Prigozhin and his forces under the deal purportedly brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

The feud between Prigozhin and the military brass has festered throughout the war, and Russian media reported that a criminal case against Prigozhin hasn’t been closed, despite earlier Kremlin statements. Some Russian lawmakers called for his head, and a retired general and current lawmaker who has clashed with the mercenary leader said Prigozhin and his right-hand man deserve “a bullet in the head.” Andrei Gurulev, a former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst, called the address weak.

In a Facebook post, he said it was a sign that Putin is “acutely dissatisfied with how he looked in this whole story and is trying to correct the situation.” The events of the weekend show the war is “cracking Russia’s political system,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his military had advanced in the war-torn Donetsk region, and the U.K. Ministry of Defense said Ukraine had “gained impetus” in its push around Bakhmut. It is uncertain what the fissures opened by the 24-hour rebellion will mean for the war in Ukraine, but the mutiny revealed the tension between Russia’s military and the Wagner Group. While the Kremlin made a deal to end the uprising, it remains unclear what will ultimately happen for Prigozhin and his forces.