Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny in Russia was “the monster acting against his creator”, the EU’s foreign policy chief has said.
“The political system is showing fragilities, and the military power is cracking,” Josep Borrell told reporters in Luxembourg as he arrived for a meeting with ministers from across the 27-member bloc.
Wagner group mercenary forces under Prigozhin seized control of military headquarters in southern Russia and began to move towards Moscow on Saturday before suddenly heading back to eastern Ukraine after a deal with the Kremlin.
“The most important conclusion is the war against Ukraine launched by Putin and the monster that Putin created with Wagner, the monster is fighting, the monster is acting against his creator,” Borrell said.
Borrell said the instability in Russia was dangerous given its nuclear arsenal and would be top of the agenda at the Luxembourg summit, where ministers voted through a promise to top up Ukraine’s military funds by €3.5bn (£3bn).
After the daylong summit, Borrell said the EU’s view of the future of Russia had changed in the wake of what he described as an “armed insurrection”.
“It is clear now that our vision of Russia is quite different. It is not just a threat because it has military capability of provoking war, which it has shown already, but also internal political instability,” he said, without elaborating on scenarios he said ministers had discussed.
“Certainly it is not a good thing to see that a nuclear power like Russia is going into a phase of political instability,” he said.
EU foreign ministers were scrambling to digest the fallout from the mutiny at their meeting.
The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said Putin was destroying his own country with his “brutal war of aggression” in Ukraine. “We are seeing massive cracks in the Russian propaganda,” she added. Baerbock said the EU would focus on helping Ukraine in its fight to let its people live in peace and freedom.
The Swedish minister Tobias Billström said it was too early to do an analysis but that the weekend’s events brought Ukraine’s potential membership of the EU into sharp focus. The most important thing was supporting Ukraine so it could win back its territory, he added.
“We will have a good opportunity to sit down and talk about the future policy with regard to Ukraine, when it comes to EU integration,” Billström said ahead of the summit. “And when it comes to giving both political, military, humanitarian and financial support to Ukraine, until Ukraine has restored its territorial integrity completely.”
Finland’s new foreign minister, Elina Valtonen, said: “It’s too early to tell where this will lead to. But of course, it’s pretty obvious that the events of the weekend will have continued effect on how Putin is seen internally, but also on how Russia is seen to the outside world.
“It is common for authoritarian states that everything seems to be very stable until one day, nothing is stable any more. And I expect such a development for Russia as well.”
Ministers approved the 11th round of sanctions against Russia, aimed at stopping Putin circumventing previous sanctions by using third countries to ship crude oil and other products around the world.
