Coup d'état in Russia: the surreal effect of the Putin's failure to invade Ukraine

@ElentirENG ES 6·24·2023 · 7:01 0

This Friday an armed rebellion broke out led by Yevgueni Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, an organization of mercenaries.

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Prigozhin denounced the attack of the Russian army on Wagner camps

It all started yesterday afternoon, at 20:00 CET, when Prigozhin announced on his channel from Telegram: "A missile attack was launched against the camps of PMC Wagner. Many casualties. According to eyewitnesses, the attack was launched from behind, i.e. was launched by the RF [Russian Federation] Ministry of Defense servicemen". The message was accompanied by a video showing images of the damage caused by that attack in a Wagner camp. After launching that complaint, Prigozhin vowed revenge using 25,000 Wagner soldiers against the Russian Defense Ministry.

The FSB accuses Prigozhin of "calling an armed rebellion"

At 20:47 CET, the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti broadcast a statement from the Russian Defense Ministry stating that the Russian attack denounced by Prigozhin against his mercenaries and the videos accompanying that denunciation "do not correspond to reality and are an informative provocation". A 21:47, RIA Novosti announced that the FSB (Russia's federal security service, successor to the famous Soviet KGB) initiated "a criminal case" against Yevgeny Prigozhin "for calling an armed rebellion and illegal actions."

Wagner's boss announces that his mercenaries have entered Russia

According to Prigozhin, Wagner forces reportedly crossed the Ukraine-Russia border and entered the Russian city of Rostov, east of the Black Sea . videos of alleged fighting in Rostov between mercenaries have already spread on social networks de Wagner and soldiers of the Russian army.

In addition, images have been released of the deployment of military vehicles in Moscow to protect the headquarters of the Russian Defense Ministry.

The surreal effects of the Russian failure in Ukraine

What we are seeing is a surreal situation derived from the Russian failure to invade Ukraine. Recall that last year, Wagner recruited 40,000 criminals from Russian prisons to fight in Ukraine, a desperate recourse of the Kremlin in view of the numerous casualties suffered by its troops in this invasion. In February, senior US officials said that 30,000 Wagner mercenaries had been killed in Ukraine. Most of those casualties are criminals recruited from Russian prisons.

The high number of casualties among his mercenaries has led Prigozhin to increasingly criticize the direction of the invasion by the Russian government. A month and a half ago, Wagner's chief denounced having received only a tenth of the promised ammunition and accused the Russian military leadership of deceiving Putin, stating that "everything is being done to make the front collapse."

Wagner's military power: he has 50,000 mercenaries in Ukraine alone

At the end of May, accusations began to circulate against Prigozhin of wanting to stage a coup in Russia, which Wagner's boss denied, claiming he did not have the necessary personnel to overthrow the Kremlin. Something that would be questionable, not only because Prigozhin has assembled a private army of considerable size: he went from only 250 mercenaries in 2014 a more than 50,000 by the end of 2022, and that's just counting their forces deployed in Ukraine, to which must be added Wagner's mercenary groups in Syria and various African countries.

A fight between the criminal leaders that surround Putin

It should be noted that this coup is far from being a move with hopes of democratizing Russia. Wagner mercenaries have committed atrocities against Ukrainian prisoners of war and also against the civilian population, including children, and they did so following express orders from the head of that group of mercenaries, which is why last year the European Parliament classified Wagner as a terrorist group, an accusation that it also leveled against Kadirov's militiamen, the dictator of Chechnya (very loyal to Putin), and other armed groups, militias and representatives financed by Russia.

What started yesterday is a fight between criminals. The only good thing that could come out of this situation is that Russia is so weakened that the Putin regime collapses and the Russians have to withdraw from Ukraine. For the rest, whoever wins in this coup wins, it is a struggle between the heads of the corrupt mafia that Putin has surrounded himself with, a mafia that also includes the highest commands of the armed forces, the most corrupt organ of the Russian regime.

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Photo: Mikhail Svetlov.