A brief mutiny led by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin may have been an “orchestrated event”, a global affairs analyst has told Sky News. He is now in apparent exile Belarus after an agreement with Vladimir Putin, but many questions remain unanswered.
Monday 26 June 2023 08:21, UK
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The Russian rouble has opened at a near 15-month low against the dollar in early morning trading, responding for the first time to Wagner’s aborted mutiny.
At 04.02 GMT, the rouble was 2.1% weaker against the dollar at 86.37, hitting 86.8800 on market opening.
It marks its weakest point since late March 2022.
Russian mercenaries led by Yevgeny Prigozhin withdrew from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don overnight on Saturday under a deal that halted their rapid advance on Moscow.
The development has also revived an old fear in the US about what happens to Russia’s nuclear stockpile in the event of domestic upheaval.
Brent crude oil, a global benchmark for Russia’s main export, was up 0.2% at $74.03 a barrel.
An anti-terror regime enforced in the city of Moscow during the Wagner Group’s armed mutiny has come to an end, the local mayor has announced.
Sergei Sobyanin cancelled the counter-terrorism security restrictions after the country’s situation was deemed “stable” by a national committee.
“We are removing all restrictions related to the introduction of the counter-terrorist operation regime,” he wrote on Telegram
“Once again, I thank the Muscovites for their calmness and understanding.”
Russian media cited local Federal Security Service (FSB) offices as saying similar regulations had been cancelled in the Voronezh and Moscow regions.
The regimes were imposed in the three regions on Saturday, as a column of rebellious Wagner mercenaries moved towards the capital, taking over military buildings along the way.
There is “little evidence” that Russia has any “significant” ground force operational-level reserves which could be used to reinforce against “multiple threats” from Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said.
In its latest intelligence update, it added that Ukrainian forces had made progress on the northern and southern flanks of Bakhmut – the eastern town that has been the site of the bloodiest fighting of the war.
Russia is now facing threats in widely separated areas from the town to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, which is more than 200km away, it said.
Families of Wagner leaders were threatened by Russian intelligence services before Yevgeny Prigozhin called off his advance on Moscow, UK security sources have told The Telegraph.
It has also been assessed that the mercenary force had 8,000 fighters rather than the 25,000 claimed, and would have likely failed to take the Russian capital, the news outlet reported.
The report offers an insight into the mystery of why Prigozhin called off his mutinous march on Moscow on Saturday just hours before reaching the city.
The Wagner leader called off his troops after striking a deal with the Kremlin brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
The Kremlin said under the deal that Prigozhin would head to Belarus in exchange for a pardon from charges of treason.
However, there has been no comment from Prigozhin over the suggestion.
It also remains unclear if Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu is set to be demoted or fired as Prigozhin demanded after a video of him visiting troops was released this morning.
Earlier this month, Ukraine launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive.
Since then, it has reclaimed some 130 square kilometres (50 square miles) of land along the southern frontline, according to Ukrainian defence minister Hanna Maliar.
In an update on Telegram, she added: “The situation in the south has not undergone significant changes over the past week.”
She also noted that along the eastern part of the front line, which includes the Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Maryinka directions, about “250 combat clashes” have taken place over the past week.
“The Russian occupying forces are putting up strong resistance, while at the same time suffering significant losses in personnel, weapons and equipment,” she wrote.
“The enemy’s casualties over the past week are eight times more than ours.”
Russia’s defence minister has made his first public appearance since the weekend mutiny by the Wagner Group, Russian state media has reported.
Sergei Shoigu visited Russian troops involved in the invasion of Ukraine and commanders of the Western military district, according to the RIA news agency.
It did not provide any details about when or where the visit took place.
His trip came after mutineers led by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin advanced on Moscow before suddenly heading back to a Russia-held area of eastern Ukraine on Saturday.
Prigozhin called off his troops after striking a deal with the Kremlin brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, which included immunity for his fighters.
Welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Over the weekend, extraordinary events unfolded in Russia after the head of the Wagner mercenary group launched an attempted coup.
Vladimir Putin hasn’t been seen publicly since Yevgeny Prigozhin stood down his mutinous fighters on Saturday evening.
Here’s what you need to know from the last 24 hours:
A former CIA director has warned the leader of the Wagner Group to “be very careful around open windows”.
Retired General David Petraeus was seemingly referencing the number of prominent Russians who have died in unclear circumstances, including in falls from windows, since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
As part of the deal for Yevgeny Prigozhin to stop the march on Moscow by his Wagner mercenaries, he agreed to go into exile in neighbouring Belarus, whose leader is a staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Prigozhin kept his life, but lost his Wagner Group,” Gen Petraeus told CNN’s State of the Union.
“And he should be very careful around open windows in his new surroundings in Belarus, where he’s going.”
By security and defence editor Deborah Haynes
A sudden uprising in Russia was over too fast to have any immediate impact on the war in Ukraine, but it exposed a fragility in Moscow that Kyiv will seek to exploit, experts have said.
They noted that the rebellion itself, by the head of a mercenary group, was actually a by-product of President Vladimir Putin’s bungled decision to invade in the first place – the ultimate unintended consequence of an operation that was meant to make him stronger.
Had the mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner private army lasted more than one day it may even have forced Putin to abandon his war in Ukraine to battle an insurrection at home, according to one senior Ukrainian MP.
However, with the coup now over, “there will be no big changes on the battlefield in the very short term”, said Oleksiy Goncharenko.
Yet it still “shows how fragile Russia is and at any moment it could collapse, so yes, I think that this makes us closer to our victory”.
Prigozhin’s outburst was the climax of a long-running feud with Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, and General Valery Gerasimov, the head of the armed forces.
The Wagner chief accused them of incompetence over the war effort and claimed their soldiers had killed his men in Ukraine even though they were meant to be on the same side.
In a series of audio and video messages posted on social media, he went further, implicitly attacking Putin for the first time, by accusing Moscow of lying about their justification for the entire Ukraine war.
Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the Ukrainian defence minister, said: “We were always saying that Russia as an empire built on lies will sooner or later implode.
“So, something tells me that what happened yesterday is probably just the beginning of a larger self-destruction of this empire of evil, and of course what makes Russia weaker, makes us stronger and brings our victory closer.”
The sight of Wagner mercenaries – many of them convicts who brought carnage to Ukraine – turning on Putin’s own military was a welcome boost for morale among Ukrainian forces, according to the MP.
And while the infighting may not have affected the tempo of Russian operations on the ground, it pointed to divisions within the ranks – and new opportunities for Ukraine.
“I think now Ukraine has a very good window of opportunity to do something,” Mr Goncharenko said.
“How we will exploit, how successfully, we will see next several weeks,” he said.
Analysts said the turmoil in Russia should prompt Western allies to ramp up supplies of weapons to Ukraine to give President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s forces the best chance of taking advantage of the situation.
Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at the Chatham House thinktank, said Putin’s domestic woes should also silence any talk in the West of Ukraine needing to reach some kind of accommodation with the Kremlin.
“Russia can be defeated and the obvious thing to do now is increase the support to Ukraine and give Ukraine what it needs to bring about that defeat now it has been shown just how weak Russia really is,” he said.
Whatever happens next in Russia, Ukraine must keep on fighting.
“Unfortunately, Ukrainian victory is possible only in the situation where Ukraine will do this job,” said Alina Frolova, a former deputy defence minister in Ukraine.
“But that will facilitate [the] destruction which [has] started in Russia and I think it will go faster and faster.”
After a weekend understandably dominated by Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group’s brief mutiny, it is perhaps easy to forget that the invasion continues.
These pictures, taken in the Zaporizhzhia region, show Ukrainian servicemen preparing a BM-21 Grad multiple launch rocket system before firing towards Russian troops near a front line.
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