The footage follows a weekend in which the Wagner Group mercenary army, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, turned against the Kremlin. After negotiations and possible security guarantees, the soldiers turned back about 200 kilometers from Moscow.
Siberia
“Prigozhin and Shoigu hate each other,” says Hammelburg. “There is an ongoing power struggle between the two, and Prigozhin has repeatedly said that the defense minister should be sent to Siberia.” However, these images show that Putin continues to support the minister of him. “If the Kremlin distributes certain videos, it is with a message. That is to say: we support Shoigoe, do not be under any illusions.’
According to Laura Starink, a former Russia correspondent and co-founder of Window on Russia, Putin is now engaged in damage control. “It was an extremely uncomfortable weekend for him.” It’s especially important for Putin to find out who is behind the mutiny, why he didn’t see it coming and whether he may have been misinformed, Starink thinks. Prigozhin is a creation of the Kremlin and Putin himself. The question is how this man managed to organize a march on Moscow. It’s time for introspection, though.’
Where is Prigozhin?
Where Wagner’s leader is now is not clear. It was allegedly agreed that Prigozhin would leave for Belarus, but it is unclear whether this actually happened. The Wagner soldiers, on the other hand, returned to the base camps. “It’s all a lot of speculation,” says Hammelburg. «One of the main reasons for the Prigozhin uprising was Putin’s plan to transfer Wagner mercenaries to the regular Russian armed forces. Now that Prigozhin is gone, the question is what will happen to the soldiers.’ There would be an offer to place them in the Russian army without coercion, Hammelburg explains.
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Flight radars
Data from Flightradar24, an online tool that tracks flights in real time, show that “a swarm of private planes” took off from Russia on Saturday as Wagner soldiers were moving rapidly towards Moscow, Hammelburg says. Presumably these were wealthy Russians who decided to leave the country. Many of these jets have flown to China, Africa, Dubai or Cyprus. “A nice symbolism of what was happening at the time,” thinks Hammelburg.