Wagner mutiny attempt in Russia could give Ukraine a boost: Blinken

The stunning political rebellion against Russian President Vladimir Putin by Wagner Company mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin could give Ukraine an advantage in its war against its Russian occupiers, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday.

The remarkable challenge to Putin’s power bruised the strongman’s image, exposed weaknesses and now poses a distraction at home in Russia, Blinken and other top experts said.

The immediate threat to Putin’s power was averted when Prigozhin called off a march on Moscow by his troops Saturday and made a deal with Russia to travel to Belarus without facing criminal charges.

In the short-lived rebellion, Prigozhin called for an armed rebellion to oust Russia’s defense minister, whom he accused of incompetence, and his soldiers took control of Russia’s military headquarters in southern Russia.

“You have seen cracks emerge that weren’t there before,” Blinken said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” predicting that much more drama will unfold in the days and weeks ahead.

“To the extent that Russia is now distracted, that Putin has to worry about what’s going on inside of Russia, as much as he has to worry about what he’s trying to do, not successfully, in Ukraine, I think that creates an additional advantage for the Ukrainians to take advantage of,” Blinken said.

“Sixteen months ago, Russian forces were on the doorstep of Kyiv, Ukraine, thinking they were going to take the city in a matter of days, erase the country from the map,” the U.S. diplomat said. “Now they had to be focused on defending Moscow, Russia’s capital, against mercenaries of Putin’s own making.”

Prigozhin’s soldiers came as close as 120 miles from Moscow, where armed checkpoints and barricades were set up on the city outskirts and crews dug up sections of roads to avert the marchers.

By Sunday, the roadblocks were dismantled, traffic was returning to normal and the road crews were repairing the highways they had ripped up.

Russian state-controlled television stations portrayed the deal with Prigozhin as a display of Putin’s strength and wisdom.

The foreign minister of Italy, one of Ukraine’s Western allies, blamed Putin for allowing the mercenary leader to build up a powerful private army.

“The myth of the unity of Putin’s Russia is over … It’s the inevitable outcome when you support and finance a legion of mercenaries,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said in an interview published Sunday in the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.

“One thing is certain: the Russian front is weaker than yesterday. I hope that peace [in Ukraine] will now be closer,” the Italian minister said.

The extraordinary move against Putin came just as Ukraine has been mounting a military counteroffensive, freshly armed with Western weaponry, to reclaim territory occupied by Russian forces in the 16-month-old war.

“Clearly Putin is weakened. His government is weakened,” Retired U.S. Gen. David Petraeus said, also on CNN. “Putin has been shaken personally. This makes him more vulnerable, arguably, than he has at any time in his two-decade rule of the Russian Federation.”

Petraeus, also the former head of the CIA, added that Prigozhin “lost his nerve” in calling off his defiant advance on Moscow, leaving his fate uncertain as well.

“He should be very careful around open windows in his new surroundings in Belarus, where he’s going,” Petraeus said.

After ending what he called his “march for justice,” Prigozhin said he ordered his fighters back to their training grounds, but the fate of the Wagner Group also is uncertain.

Under the deal with Russia, some Wagner fighters will join the Russian Ministry of Defense, and none will be charged for their role in the mutiny.

Fighters with the Wagner Group occupied the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in May after a long battle, giving Russia one of its few high-profile military victories.

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“For a dictatorship built on the idea of unchallenged power, this was an extreme humiliation, and it’s hard to see the genie of doubt ever being forced back into the bottle,” said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews.

“So, if Prigozhin might have lost in the short term, Putin is likely to be the long-term loser,” O’Brien said.

Russia is facing “a deeply unstable equilibrium,” said a report issued by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

Warding off this threat from Prigozhin is “a short-term fix, not a long-term solution,” the institute wrote in its assessment.

The infighting will give a boost to Ukrainians, noted Ben Barry, senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“These events will have been of great comfort to the Ukrainian government and the military,” Barry said.

With News Wire Services