Why didn’t Yevgeny Prigojine go through with his rebellion? The day after a day under high tension in Russia, marked by the armed rebellion of the Wagner group, this question is in everyone’s mind. As he claimed to be on Saturday morning at the Russian army headquarters in the city of Rostov, a key center for the Russian assault on Ukraine, and to have taken control of military sites, including an airfield, and heading straight for Moscow, he finally backtracked after mediation led by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Putin considered “a loser”
All eyes are now on Vladimir Putin. The Ukrainian presidency also immediately pointed out the “weakness” of the Russian leader “humiliated by Prigojine”.
According to the international columnist of Figaro Renaud Girard, guest of the Grand Rendez-vous d’Europe 1/CNews/The echoes Sunday, Vladimir Putin is now considered by many as a “soft”, a “looser”. “What is interesting about Prigozhin is that he did not only tactically criticize Putin. It is also a strategic criticism because in his statement on Saturday morning he criticized Ukraine’s entry into the war. He even said that Putin lied to the people and he promised to ‘liberate Russia from lies and corruption.’ Of course, he didn’t do anything,” he said.
Did Prigozhin have “implied forms of green lights”?
While Evguéni Prigojine said he was ready to die with his 25,000 men and ready to destroy everything that will be put in his way, the leader of the Wagner group will finally leave the country for Belarus and the criminal investigation targeting him will go be abandoned. How could Vladimir Putin, considered Russia’s strongman, allow himself to be challenged head-on? “Putin has no more weight than that, he has lost his dominance,” said historian Jean-François Colosimo, guest of the Grand Rendez-vous d’Europe 1/CNews/The echoeswho does not believe that Yevgeny Prigojine could have acted alone.
For him, the ties of the clan members to Putin are increasingly strained under the effect of the war. “I don’t think he could have acted without having some form of implicit green light. I’m not talking about support, I’m just saying that he had to consult, test the waters with some of the clan’s officers, whether in the security services or the oligarchs”, he deciphered.
Yet supported by the army and a large part of the population, Yevgeny Prigojine would have dropped the case because he would not have “the support of the real apparatus of government, the same apparatus of government that surrounds Putin”, added Jean-Francois Colosimo.
“It is obvious that Prigozhin cannot replace Putin”
“We are focused on this Prigozhin-Putin duel but it is obvious that Prigozhin cannot replace Putin. So the question that must be asked is: who is the third man who could have benefited from this operation, who preferred not to not take advantage of it right away because the case was certainly not ripe, but who has already taken advantage of it because Putin is considerably weakened?” Asked Jean-François Colosimo. “Prigojine is a bit in this business, I would say, the useful idiot of people who are far superior to him,” concluded the historian and essayist.