Joe Biden has described the Wagner mercenary group’s brief mutiny against the Russian government as part of an internal power struggle, in which he said the US played no role.
“We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” Biden said during an event at the White House on Monday. “We’re going to keep assessing the fallout of this weekend’s events and the implications for Russia and Ukraine. But it’s still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about where this is going.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s revolt, in which Wagner fighters seized the city of Rostov and headed toward Moscow in an armed convoy, was a dramatic and unprecedented public challenge to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. But after a chaotic 24 hours, Prigozhin announced on Saturday that he would stand down after reaching a deal with government officials.
Biden and other western allies supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion have made a pointed effort of being seen to stay out of the uprising, the biggest threat to Putin in his two decades leading Russia.
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, warned that there was a risk of advancing what he described as Russian propaganda and that the best approach would be to not get involved.
“We need to make sure that we are not facilitating the liberal use of propaganda and disinformation that we know the Russians tend to do … Carefully monitoring and watching but not getting involved I think is the responsible and safe thing to do,” he told reporters.
It is still unclear what the larger ramifications of Prigozhin’s short-lived rebellion will be, experts say, both on Russia’s domestic politics as well as its military invasion of Ukraine. US officials, policy analysts and researchers are closely watching whether this marks a wider shift in power dynamics and what this means for Putin’s control over Russia.
The White House is expected to announce an up to $500m aid package to Ukraine this week, which will reportedly include dozens of ground vehicles, as well as anti-tank and anti-aircraft munitions. Ukraine launched a long-planned counteroffensive this month, but has faced the heavy use of landmines and Russian air power as its forces struggle to regain territory.
The state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Monday that the US was monitoring the developments.
Prigozhin’s open defiance of the government, as well as Putin’s slow response to address the crisis, has led to speculation about whether the incident weakens Putin’s standing among Russian elites. Although none of Russia’s power brokers offered any public support for Prigozhin, experts noted that many top officials remained largely absent during the events.
In a string of messages released late on Friday, Prigozhin contradicted Putin’s rationale for the invasion of Ukraine and claimed the conflict could have been avoided.
“It is certainly a new thing to see President Putin’s leadership directly challenged,” Miller said on Monday. “It is a new thing to see Yevgeny Prigozhin directly questioning the rationale for this war and calling out that the war has been conducted essentially based on a lie.”
Russia observers are watching whether Prigozhin’s actions result in Putin issuing a wider crackdown on dissent in the coming weeks and attempting to forcefully reassert his grip on power, according to Kimberly Marten, a professor of political science and expert on the Wagner group at Barnard College at Columbia University.
“That’s the question,” Marten said. “Is there going to be a breakdown in the ability to control things, or is Putin going to become much more cruel and decisive in an attempt to stop that from happening?”
In an unscheduled late-night televised address on Monday, Putin claimed credit for “avoiding bloodshed”, but it remained unclear if the crisis had been resolved.
“Even though we have some kind of supposedly negotiated agreement that solves this problem, it’s very unlikely that Putin will let this go,” Marten said.
