In a dramatic turn of events over the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin faced a near-collapse of his reign as an armed mutiny was launched by one of his close allies.
The mutiny began when Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy Russian warlord who was close to Putin, accused Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu of incompetence and of deliberately undersupplying his men in Ukraine.
Prigozhin ordered the Wagner Group to march to Russia’s capital, Moscow, from where they were stationed in Ukraine.
Listen the full episode below to find out:
On today’s episode of The Briefing, Monica Attard Co-Director, Centre For Media Transition at the University of Technology Sydney and former ABC Russian correspondent, explains who stopped it. What does it mean for Putin’s reign?
The Wagner Group is a private army of fighters founded by Prigozhin; the group is described as “mercenary”, meaning professional soldiers who work for money, not for a particular country or cause.
It’s a very, very kind of shady outfit, and for a long time, we didn’t know who ran it. But recently, as a result of Russia invading Ukraine, we discovered that the person who led that was in fact Yevgeny Prigozhin,”
Attard said.
She said Prigozhin was quite unhappy with the way the Russian Ministry of Defence had treated him during the Ukrainian war.
In fact, all the way through the Ukraine war, he (Prigozhin) has been very, very loud in his criticism of how the Kremlin, the Russians have conducted the war in Ukraine,”
she said.
In his view, I might add, not because they have been too brutal, they haven’t been brutal enough, they haven’t been badass enough in Ukraine.”
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