No matter how Saturday’s struggle for power in Russia unfolds, officials in Kyiv say they’re sure of one thing: it benefits Ukraine.
(Bloomberg) — No matter how Saturday’s struggle for power in Russia unfolds, officials in Kyiv say they’re sure of one thing: it benefits Ukraine.
The chaos in Russia comes at a critical time, three weeks into a Ukrainian counteroffensive. The next 24-48 hours will be decisive for how the situation unfolds, and Ukraine is not rushing into any military response, said Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to President Volodymr Zelenskiy.
The strife is nevertheless clear evidence of disintegration within Russia’s political system and is sure to distract from President Vladimir Putin’s war effort, he said.
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“This is absolutely a good day for Ukraine, because of the internal processes that will begin in Russia,” he said during an interview at his office. “These will surely lead to speeding up the end of the war.”
There are multiple ways Prigozhin’s armed revolt can end, but three conclusions are already clear, he said. Russian elites are divided, Putin has lost his aura of infallibility, and an internal military conflict is underway within Russia.
Earlier in the day, Zelenskiy discussed the events across the border with his top security officials. Putin described the Wagner chief’s actions as treason in a televised address to his nation.
Prigozhin, at odds for months with Russia’s military commanders over their conduct of Ukraine’s invasion, pulled his troops across the border early Saturday. He said it was not an attempted coup d’etat, but a “march for justice.” By afternoon armored Wagner columns were pressing toward Moscow.
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So far there is no evidence any regular Russian troops had been diverted from Ukraine to deal with the uprising at home. There’s also no immediate sign the battlefield in Ukraine has been materially affected. Kyiv told the US on Saturday its counteroffensive was going “according to plan,” Ukraine’s top commander, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said.
Mark Hertling, a former US Army general, cautioned in a tweet against the assumption that events in Russia were creating battlefield opportunities for Kyiv.
However, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate said in a statement Moscow was preparing for a siege, and that military equipment held in reserve at the border with Ukraine was being pulled back to the capital. Those claims could not be independently verified.
Prigozhin said he’d taken control of the city of Rostov-on-Don, while geolocated images later showed his forces outside Voronezh — two of the three largest command and logistics hubs for Russian forces in Ukraine. The third hub is on the Crimea peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014 and in recent days has seen its bridge and rail connections to mainland Ukraine attacked.
There was no hiding a sense of glee in Ukraine on Saturday, even as Russia continued to fire missiles at the capital and other cities.
“Russia’s weakness is obvious. Full-scale weakness. And the longer Russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain and problems it will have for itself later,” Zelenskiy said in a Twitter post.
Memes of people grabbing for popcorn to watch events unfold spread across Ukrainian social media. Others joked about how they could crowd fund weapons for Wagner’s fighters, something which Kyiv has done itself to fund supplies.
In a post on Twitter, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense taunted Moscow, saying it was “wondering why Russian soldiers are still sitting in muddy trenches rather than running to the aid of their comrades.”
Ahead of his attempt to seize control Prigozhin had dismissed Putin’s claims about how the war started as fake. He also said the true scale of Russian casualties was being hidden and pledged to return to the battlefield with a more effective war effort.
Podolyak dismissed the possibility that either Prigozhin or Putin might later assert their authority at home by ordering a full mobilization of recruits and redouble the war effort in Ukraine.
That’s because whoever now ends up in charge in the Kremlin would have to focus on consolidating their power at home, he said.
“There are no resources for mobilization, it is a fiction.”
(Adds Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, paragraph 15)
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