Uprising in Russia
“This is the beginning of the end”
By Marko Schlichting
06/26/2023, 05:15 am
On Friday evening, Wagner boss Prigoshin calls for an storm on Moscow, on Saturday evening he whistles his men back. There is no showdown in the Kremlin. The Kremlin doesn’t say much about the events. But President Putin is ailing, as the guests at Anne Will agree.
Anne Will was supposed to be talking about last week’s German-Chinese consultations on Sunday evening. But then the Wagner mercenaries in Russia rebelled on Saturday night. She quickly penetrated the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and reached Voronezh with almost no problems. Then the stop, about 200 kilometers from Moscow. The Commander-in-Chief of the Wagner Army, Yevgeny Prigozhin, negotiates. A few hours earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had given a speech that was repeated on Russian television on a continuous loop into the evening. In it he speaks of a mutiny by neo-Nazis who would be punished for it. After the negotiations on Saturday afternoon, one thing is certain: the rebelling Wagner mercenaries will be granted amnesty, and Wagner boss Prigozhin will go into exile in Belarus. However, the negotiations are not being conducted by Putin, but by Belarusian President Lukashenko. And so the guests at Anne Will’s do not talk about China, but about Russia. What are the consequences of the uprising? And what conclusions should the West draw?
“If I were Prigozhin, I would change the bed three times a night”
Among the guests is Carlo Masala from the Bundeswehr University in Munich. He had previously explained Prigozhin’s withdrawal to ntv by saying that the hoped-for support from the security apparatus and the army had failed to materialize. Even if the military contractor now goes into exile in Belarus, he will remain the leader of the Wagner troupe. “He will probably try to make politics out of Belarus. But President Lukashenko will not allow that. The Prigozhin issue is over.” With Anne Will, masala goes even further. “If I were Prigozhin, I would change my bed three times a night for the next three years,” he says. He’s definitely not wrong. The Russian secret service has repeatedly demonstrated that the life of an unfaithful Russian is not worth much.
In Anne Will, Masala also commented on Putin: “The man who likes to show himself shirtless and ride bears and horses is cornered by a private army. That’s a slap in the face for him.” Cracks became visible in the foundations of Putin’s apparatus of power on Saturday.
“Putin’s power is crumbling,” agrees SPD leader Lars Klingbeil. Putin has not achieved his military goals in Ukraine and he is not succeeding in fighting the corrupt elites in his country. Ultimately, this will lead to Putin continuing to lose power. “I don’t know how quickly that will happen. But I believe that Saturday’s uprising is a turning point in Russian history and perhaps in the war in Ukraine.”
“Putin acts under pressure”
For the CDU foreign politician Roderich Kiesewetter, the events on Saturday show: “Putin acts under pressure. He has experienced weakness and then he negotiates.” That gives hope for the war in Ukraine. The Russian armed forces are weak. “We know that while they have the staff, they don’t have the equipment.” The willingness to negotiate with Prigozhin must be a signal for the West. “This is the beginning of the end, and it is an appeal for us: we must not let up in supporting Ukraine, and we must now use Putin’s weakness so that his center of gravity, Crimea, can be liberated.” To do this, the Russian supply lines would have to be destroyed, but not bloodily, but with long-range weapons, missiles and fighter planes. That must be the consequence of the West in view of the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, on July 11 and 12. At the same time, it is Europe’s task to relieve the United States of arms supplies.
Europe will deliver weapons, says Klingbeil. In addition, 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers are to be trained by the end of the year. The federal government is concerned with what else can be done. Kiesewetter knows what: “Further financial resources must be made available for production.” That is the task of the federal government and its partners in Europe. “It’s a difficult political decision,” said Kiesewetter, “and I expect the Chancellor to position himself more clearly.”