Last Thursday Yevgeny Prigozhin let rip on his favourite subject: the incompetence and vanity of Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. Seated in front of a Wagner flag and sipping from a mug of tea, he called his bitter enemy a scumbag. Shoigu was a craven PR man and oligarch who had never held a weapon in his life, he raged.
The defence ministry had duped Vladimir Putin into last year’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin added. The decision had nothing to do with “denazification” or “demilitarisation”, or an imminent Nato attack on Russia – the official reasons for the war. It was all about Shoigu’s wish for a second “hero of Russia” medal, he claimed.
So far, so normal. Prigozhin’s online rants against Russia’s military leaders had been going on for months. He had previously accused Shoigu and commander-in-chief Valery Gerasimov of depriving his Wagner troops of ammunition, of sacrificing Russian soldiers in disastrous missions and of seizing eastern Ukraine in order to plunder it.
The feud escalated dramatically on 10 June, when Shoigu announced that Wagner soldiers would have to sign contracts with his ministry. In effect, Wagner would cease to exist. Putin seemingly endorsed the proposal. Prigozhin, once Putin’s trusted ally, was at a personal crossroads. He might accept the Kremlin’s decision. Or he could fight back.
The answer came on Friday evening when he posted another provocative video on his Telegram channel. It showed the apparent aftermath of a missile strike on a leafy Wagner camp. The location was somewhere in occupied Donbas. A breathless soldier jogged past shredded trees and what looked like a body. “Fuck! Oh fuck!,” he said.
Prigozhin claimed Russia’s defence ministry had carried out the attack, causing “many victims”. “According to eyewitnesses, the blow was struck from the rear,” he wrote. The video looked staged. Nonetheless he now had a rationale for launching the next part of an extraordinary and daring plan. Wagner was about to invade Russia.
According to the New York Times, Prigozhin had been contemplating a mutiny for some time. US spy agencies picked up indications of a serious plot. Intelligence officials briefed a small group of congressional leaders in Washington last Thursday. The concern: what might happen to Russia’s nuclear arsenal if it fell into the wrong hands?
Moscow, by contrast, appeared to be in the dark about Prigozhin’s intentions. On Friday evening a column of armoured vehicles with Wagner soldiers perched on top exited Ukraine. They crossed the international border and trundled serenely towards Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people and a busy logistics centre for the Ukraine war. Nobody stopped them.
Residents woke on Saturday morning to discover they had new warlord masters. Prigozhin strolled into the building belonging to Russia’s southern district military command and installed himself as its new boss. His mercenaries patrolled the streets. Curious locals emerged to see what was happening. The mood was calm. People took selfies with a tank, a woman handed a bottle of water to a Wagner guy in a balaclava.
Even senior military figures seemed pleased to meet Prigozhin, the man of the hour and a one-time hot dog seller from Leningrad. He chatted to the deputy defence minister, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, and the deputy chief of the general staff, Vladimir Alexeyev. He demanded Shoigu and Gerasimov’s removal and added, matter-of-factly, that if his wishes were not met he would lead his mini-army to the gates of Moscow.
These unforeseen developments stunned the Kremlin. They constituted the biggest challenge to Putin’s authority since he became president in 2000. The Russian president had railed against the west for years, accusing leaders in the US and UK of seeking to destabilise his regime. And yet it was Prigozhin, a friend and restaurant owner who had personally served Putin dinner in St Petersburg, who was wielding the knife. Et tu, Yevgeny?
There was a swirl of questions. Did groups within Russia’s military and security elite covertly support the rebels? And if it came to it, would regular soldiers open fire on their Wagner comrades? Most of the army was away, serving in Ukraine. Rosgvardiya, the internal security division, was no match for Prigozhin’s experienced fighters. Neither was Putin’s old FSB spy agency. Events were moving at dizzying speed.
At 10am Putin addressed the nation. Looking white-faced and furious, he accused Wagner of endangering the constitution and committing treason. He promised harsh punishment and legal measures against “mutineers”.
In Moscow, police built barricades while armoured vehicles were sent to defend ministries and key buildings. A flurry of planes left. Ukrainian intelligence claimed Putin had fled north to his residence near Lake Valdai.
By midday the rebels were on the move. Video captured dozens of vehicles including an air-defence system driving up the M4, the 1,100-kilometre southern highway connecting Rostov and Moscow.
Wagner visited a military base in Voronezh, half way along the route. An attack helicopter was spotted clattering above the city. It blew up an oil terminal. Four aerial bombs fell near a bridge in an attempt to stop the convoy.
At first some observers wondered if Prigozhin had secretly coordinated his uprising with the Kremlin. This conspiratorial version turned out to be wrong. Prigozhin’s breezy coup attempt, or march for justice as he meekly put it, was real. His soldiers shot down a Ka-52 attack helicopter, killing its crew. They destroyed an Il-18 aircraft. At least 15 Russian servicemen died. Most were combat pilots.
It was a surreal afternoon. The convoy continued northwards, rolling through a landscape of pine trees and fields under a dull grey sky. A tank sat on the back of a heavy loader. A jeep screeched past. Over in Ukraine, the atmosphere was one of jubilation. If it succeeded, the uprising might mean the end of Russia’s bloody invasion. Or of Putin. Or both, many hoped.
Then at around 8pm there was another remarkable twist. Belarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, announced the rebellion was off after negotiations he had brokered, a fact Prigozhin confirmed soon afterwards in a voice memo. The two sides had agreed a deal. Progozhin said his followers wanted to avoid bloodshed. They had got to within a two-hour drive of Moscow but would return to their “field camps” in eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin gave supplementary details. Putin’s press spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said no one from Wagner would be prosecuted. The mercenary group’s soldiers could join the regular army. Or not. And, most importantly, Prigozhin would go into exile in Belarus. These conditions seemed astonishingly lenient. Putin had previously jailed opposition leaders for long, punitive periods. His critics had died in mysterious ways.
It wasn’t immediately clear on Saturday night which side blinked first. But it was obvious where public sympathy lay, at least judging from the rapturous send-off given to the departing Prigozhin. Young men cheered his SUV and broke into chants of “Wagner Wagner”. They took photos and shook his hand. There were excited whoops as a soldier fired a volley into the air by way of valedictory salute.
The atmosphere cooled as soon as the first police units arrived in Rostov. Several people booed the representatives of the old order. Prigozhin is an oligarch and a billionaire, but his crusade against corruption and calls for greater honesty have struck a chord in a state characterised by theft and organised lying. His blunt, no-nonsense videos – he likened Gerasimov last week to a “squealing fishwife” – have made him a celebrity.
For Putin, it was a narrow escape from an extremely dangerous moment. He emerges from the crisis a weaker and more vulnerable figure. The mantra of his time in office has been stability. Yes, Russians have fewer rights. But, according to Moscow’s messaging, they enjoy predictable government, in contrast to the chaos and decadence on offer in the west. His reputation for dependable leadership has now gone.
Ukrainian officials have watched events inside Russia with glee. Yuri Saks, an adviser to the defence ministry, described the uprising as ridiculous, bizarre and weird, and as “inter-species in-fighting between different factions of a terrorist country”. The takeaway in Kyiv is that Moscow is reaping what it has sown. They predict more turbulence to come and the collapse, sooner or later, of Putin’s murderous regime.
Russia’s president gave the impression on Sunday that it was business as usual. He pledged to continue his “special military operation” in an interview apparently recorded before the uprising. The war is going badly. If Ukraine’s counteroffensive succeeds in taking back territory and breaks through Russian defensive lines this summer, Putin will find himself under even more pressure at home.
There was no sign on Sunday of Prigozhin. It wasn’t immediately clear if he is in Belarus or somewhere else. It seems unlikely that he and Putin can co-exist for long, even if Prigozhin agrees to stay in Minsk. The Wagner chief has become a rival and pretender, and a possible post-Putin president. His coup attempt may be over for now, but Russia is entering a new and unpredictable phase.
Luke Harding’s Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival is published in paperback by Guardian Faber
