INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The Kremlin has ordered a major PR damage control effort in the five days since armed Russian mercenaries seized a southern city and came
within 200 kilometers of the capital with barely any resistance, Russian officials told The Moscow Times.Wagner mercenary group leader
saw scenes of civilians cheering for Wagner troops in Rostov-on-Don.On the eve of Putin's widely expected announcement that he will run for
since the mutiny was called off, President Vladimir Putin has eschewed his strict, long-held quarantine mandate to hug and take selfies with
the public in the streets of the republic of Dagestan.He insisted that the mutineers did not galvanize support from the public and that the
whole nation and said that he has not been weakened by the rebellion.For the Kremlin, the aborted mutiny has exposed several critical
problems which demand urgent attention
Of these, the task of saving Putin's image as a figure who is supported by the nation was ordered to be dealt with immediately, a source
troops easily took Rostov-on-Don and nearly made it to Moscow with no resistance, it created the image that no one stood up for the chief
This contradicts the image of the nationally beloved leader," the Russian official said.Kremlin officials, particularly its political
agreed to decamp to neighboring Belarus, where construction of field camps to house them is already underway, in exchange for criminal
that American intelligence knew about this better and earlier than the FSB says something about the effectiveness of the FSB, at least at
suffers from poor communication of information inside the system and problems with distribution of responsibility, said Oleg Ignatov, a
Everyone thought that it was Putin himself who was behind Prigozhin
The presidential administration did not interfere
The FSB turned a blind eye because they don't like the army
Everybody thought somebody was controlling him, but not them
But as a result, it turned out that no one was
Middle- and upper-level [officials] who didn't understand what was going on simply ran away
The security and law enforcement agencies were given orders to nearly blow up bridges
Shoigu ran away somewhere
And this is not a staging, this is a real thing," the government official said.Another problem is determining whether Prigozhin acted on his
Ukraine and a figure seen as close to Prigozhin
a later date," Matthew Rojansky, CEO of the U.S
Russia Foundation and distinguished fellow of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute, told The Moscow Times.Putin likely understands at least
in part the scale of the problems in the military and security services that have become so apparent since the full-scale invasion of
However, he cannot initiate a serious reshuffle given that Russia is in a state of heavy warfare, said Yevgeny Roshchin, a researcher at
And he will already know how to act in this environment
That is, the lesson has been learned, and it is unlikely that the new Prigozhin will stop halfway
incident has also marked the beginning of the destruction of many myths about the sacred nature of the Kremlin, the omnipresence of the
siloviki and patriotic unity, said Russian political analyst Yekaterina Kurbangaleyeva.But although what happened has dealt a heavy blow to
the system, Gabuev said it also gives the system an inoculation against turmoil, which Putin can use to strengthen his grip.
