A sense of normal returned to Moscow on Sunday after Yevgeny Prigozhin halted his assault on the Russian capital under a deal that defused an unprecedented challenge to the authority of president Vladimir Putin.
Security forces were seen disassembling barricades that had been hurriedly put up as Prigozhin’s Wagner troops approached along the M4 road from Rostov-on-Don, while workers began repairing roads leading up to the capital that were destroyed to stop the warlord’s advances before he ordered their withdrawal.
“The city seems completely back to normal,” said David, who works at a bar in the centre of the city.
Russia’s central bank said that the Moscow stock exchange, banks and financial institutions were expected to operate as usual on Monday, despite the city’s mayor on Saturday declaring it a non-working day.
David said he planned to use the free day to organise a barbecue with his friends at a park. “In the end, things turned out fine. I am no longer worried,” David said.
Russia’s state television largely ignored Prigozhin’s revolt on Sunday, instead keeping to their usual schedules showing films and entertainment programmes.
Some pro-war commentators gloated about what they said was a failed attempt to divide the country.
“The mourning among fans of the junta is simply a great pleasure to watch,” Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, wrote on his Telegram channel.
But for a brief moment on Saturday, anxiety in the city had been palpable. Irina, a local marketing manager, said she left for her dacha north of Moscow after she heard that Prigozhin’s troops were approaching the capital.
“It was scary of course. We quickly gathered our bags and drove out. We had no idea what would happen,” she said. “I was relieved when I heard his troops were turning back.”
As the evening went on, Moscow deployed soldiers in preparation for Wagner’s arrival and the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, introduced a “counterterrorist regime” urging residents to avoid going out.
Others said they tried to make sense of what happened.
“It was a very emotional day,” said a low-level official at Moscow’s mayor’s office. “No one could have imagined this, this was like a crazy reality show. I am still trying to wrap my head around it!”
Russia’s political elite too appeared to be rattled. Officials in Moscow were said to have been blindsided by Prigozhin’s betrayal and declaration of war on the defence ministry.
“It’s real shock and hysteria, nobody understands what to do,” an ex-defence minister who said he was in touch with his former colleagues at the ministry said on Saturday.
In a short video recorded outside a monastery in Moscow, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova pleaded for “unity” against Prigozhin, calling him a “Judas”. “To those who make important decisions … be brave, be loyal, be defenders of the country and the people,” she said.
One wealthy resident of the upmarket Rublyovka neighbourhood outside Moscow said they had ordered their personal security to be on high alert as the rebellion approached the city.
“Prigozhin is crazy, he is the worst and capable of anything. We told our guards to just be ready for anything,” they said.
Prigozhin has long rallied against Russia’s very rich, urging them to take a more active role in the war. He previously welcomed an apparent Ukrainian drone strike on Rublyovka.
The Russian investigations outlet iStories, citing flight data, said the private jets belonging to several prominent oligarchs – including steel magnate Vladimir Potanin and billionaire Arkady Rotenberg – flew out of Moscow shortly after Prigozhin captured Rostov-on-Don.
But elsewhere in the country, Prigozhin’s self-styled “march of justice” did not appear to have spoiled the festive summer mood.
In St Petersburg, thousands of young people gathered on Saturday night for the Scarlet Sails celebrations, an annual event on the Neva River for recent high school graduates that included fireworks and several pop concerts.
Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center based in Moscow, said while Prigozhin did appear to enjoy some popularity among segments of the population unhappy with Russia’s faltering war efforts, many in the country still opted for the relative calm that the Putin regime offered.
“Supporters of stability, choosing between Putin and Prigozhin, will choose Putin,” Kolesnikov said.
Still, Saturday’s unprecedented developments will probably be discussed in households across the country, said Samuel Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London, whose research examines Putin’s sources of popularity.
“This will be the conversation topic around tens of millions of kitchen tables, and people will debate whether Putin was right or wrong,” Greene said in a tweet. “Previously unimaginable things, like a change of leadership, may become more plausible.”
