Wagner revolt ‘beginning of the end’ for Putin, Ukraine war?
- The Wagner Group marched toward Moscow in a short-lived rebellion
- Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner's chief, was exiled to Belarus
- Analyst: Revolt showed Putin's allies aren't willing to fight for him
(NewsNation) — Tensions between the leader of a Russian mercenary group and top brass in the military boiled over this weekend, when the Wagner Group left Ukraine and marched toward Moscow.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin marched his troops hundreds of kilometers with relative ease, seizing control of a military headquarters in the city of Rostov-on-Don. From there, a convoy continued north toward Moscow before turning back.
What did the short-lived rebellion reveal about the state of affairs in Russia?
Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, said it shows President Vladimir Putin is running low on political capital with his foreign allies. Putin received vocal support from leaders of countries including Turkey, but no known offers of military assets.
“You saw that he had nobody, nobody on the global stage, except for Belarus, which has no choice,” Bremmer said Monday on “CUOMO.”
Under a deal announced Saturday by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Prigozhin will go to neighboring Belarus, which has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Charges against him of mounting an armed rebellion will be dropped.
Bremmer rejected the idea that Prigozhin wasn’t prepared to go all the way and that Putin knew as much, citing the fact that Wagner troops shot down more than one aircraft.
“If he decided to press and fight against Putin in Moscow, that could have been the end of Russia’s defensive lines in Ukraine,” Bremmer said. “That two-front war was something that was really a problem for Putin, so if you play that out long term, this could have been the beginning of the end. Maybe it still will.”