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Evidence of a coup d’état in Russia or an anti-Shoigu move by Wagner and Putin? Expert analysis

11 months ago babelfish

Evidence of a coup d'état in Russia or an anti-Shoigu move by Wagner and Putin? Expert analysis

What happened in Russia. News and insights

"The revolt of the Wagner Group is in fact a coup attempt," said General Giorgio Cuzzelli. "Prospects are worrying for the stability of the system as well as for the consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict for which new options are opening up ranging from an end to hostilities in the silence of weapons to hypotheses of further barbarism, with the use of unconventional weapons" , according to General Leonardo Tricarico. "We need to see how Russia will react and if it has the antibodies to this action which comes at a very delicate moment", remarked General Marco Bertolini.

These are some of the comments on the scenario of a real coup d'état in Russia, which then returned after the reversal of the leaders of the Wagner Group.

Let's see the latest news from Russia and then the analyzes of experts and analysts: was it a fake revolt against Putin and instead a move to torpedo Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu?

THE REVERSE OF THE WAGNER GROUP

“We stop and go back to basics. Let's go back to Ukraine." The head of the Wagner company of mercenaries Yevgeny Prigozhin announces in an audio message that he wants to "avoid a bloodbath" and that he has accepted the mediation of the Belarusian president Alexandr Lukashenko to end the crisis triggered today. Prigozhin said a word about negotiations with Lukashenko but said he did not want to shed "Russian blood". “They were going to cloak Wagner,” Prigozhin said in the audio message. The founder of the group pointed out that his men today marched 200km in the direction of Moscow and in this time frame they have not "shed a single drop of blood from our fighters". “Now the time has come when blood can be shed. Therefore, to prevent this from happening, we bring our columns back and go in the opposite direction, towards the battlefields from the plan". What this plan was, Prigozhin does not explain and does not even comment on the negotiations with the Belarusian president, negotiations which the presidency gave an account of in Minsk. Prigozhin's announcement came when the convoy of mercenaries was approaching the outskirts of Moscow: according to the Reuters agency, that convoy has around 5,000 men and is led by Wagner's commander, Dmitry Utkin. In all, Wagner can count on 25,000 men, 5,000 of whom are in Rostov-on-Don, which Prigozhin claims to control.

WHAT WAS GOING ON IN RUSSIA: COUP?

But what were the assessments of the experts shortly before the reversal of the Wagner Group?

"The civil war has officially begun." One of the channels linked to the Wagner Group writes it on Telegram, spreading the images of a Russian helicopter allegedly shot down in Voronezh by Prigozhin's mercenaries. What Prigozhin carried out is "a cowardly betrayal", a "mutiny" which must be "crushed" says the Chechen commander Kadyrov, assuring that he is ready to collaborate to put an end to the rebellion. From Moscow, which also receives the support of Erdogan, after Putin who defined Wagner's action "a stab in the back", Medvedev also speaks: "The enemy will be defeated" he says.

INTERNATIONAL REACTIONS

“Russia's weakness is evident. It is weakness on a massive scale. And the longer Russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain and problems it will have later”: so the Ukrainian president, Zelensky. The US is following the crisis and consulting with its allies. The EU High Representative, Borrell, had a call with the G7 foreign ministers for an exchange of views: “I am coordinating and have activated the crisis response centre. Our support for Ukraine continues unabated,” he says. At the end of the Europa Forum Wachau, the Prime Minister, Meloni, announced a web call with the ministers concerned and intelligence.

TRICARICO SCENARIOS

“As foreseeable and as foreseen, the parable of Prighozin and the genetic and media change of his company Wagner reaches a critical point, a sort of Rubicon that Putin's chef is preparing to cross. The scenarios that can open up are in any case worrying”. This was stated to Adnkronos by General Leonardo Tricarico, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force and current president of the ICSA Foundation on the situation in Russia in the light of the action of the head of the Wagner mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the president's speech Russian Vladimir Putin who defined the armed revolt as a serious act of treason. "The explicit and harsh challenge to the Russian military apparatus, to its disastrous – according to him – results in the war (he is the only one who has used this term with impunity for some time without ending up in prison) and to its leaders including the minister, could lead to an internal armed confrontation whose physiognomy and whose outcomes are all to be evaluated – continues General Tricatico – The political dimension of Wagner's leader's parable should also be carefully considered, a leap in quality that can be assumed from the beginning of his utterances, apparently bizarre, incomprehensible but which have always kept Putin out of insults with a constant walk on the razor's edge but which now seem destined to provoke an explicit and peremptory outing of Putin". “In any case, the prospects are worrying for the stability of the system as well as for the consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict for which new options are opening up ranging from an end to hostilities in the silence of arms to hypotheses of further barbarism, with the use of unconventional”, concludes the general.

FRANCESCO SISCI'S ANALYSIS

"The front with Ukraine could collapse in the next few hours, in the next few days. A country cannot fight a civil war and an external war at the same time and Ukraine will be the political protagonist of European politics". This is what Francesco Sisci , an analyst of geopolitics and international relations underlines, with particular reference to the relations between China, Russia and the West, in a conversation with the AdnKronos agency, after the Russian leader Vladimir Putin defined the armed revolt launched by Yevgeny Prigozhin as "a stab in the back of our troops and Russia", speaking of "serious acts of treason" and assuring that those responsible "will pay for it".

"It is clear – says Sisci – that we are in a situation of civil war of chaos and we don't know when and how we will get out of it or how far this chaos will spread". And, he adds, "the war in Ukraine is effectively over now", regardless of "who will win the game" in Russia, more than a year has passed since the Russian invasion which on February 24 last year Putin defined as an "operation special military".

“The front with Ukraine could collapse in the next few hours, in the next few days – observes the expert – A country cannot fight a civil war and an external war at the same time and Ukraine will be the political protagonist of European politics”. With the consequence of a “reshuffling of many cards”.

THE COMMENT OF GENERAL BERTOLINI

"Drawing conclusions is now impossible and imprudent, the situation is open to any conclusion", General Marco Bertolini, former commander of the IOC, told Adnkronos on the situation in Russia in the light of the action of the head of the Wagner mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin who defined the armed uprising as a grave act of treason. "Prigozhin has been taking very tough positions for some time, for some they had a hidden tactical purpose, in a nutshell they were just a drama – underlines General Bertolini – He made his last statements just before completing the occupation of Bakhmut: it seemed like a maneuver of the media but that was not the case and, with what has been done in Rostov, it becomes clear that there is something substantial. Until now, Prigozhin's positions did not seem to be addressed to Putin, but to the military leadership such as the Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and General Valery Gerasimov, almost as if it were an internal feud in the military world. But Putin's reaction was very harsh, he did not hesitate to speak of betrayal and backstabbing, let's see what happens at this point". "Certainly it is strange that a militia, which has been the protagonist of the most important actions in Ukraine and beyond, suddenly changes its position – observes General Bertolini – This raises many questions: we need to see how Russia will react and if it has the antibodies to this action which comes at a very delicate moment, in which the operations in Ukraine were rewarding the Russian effort"

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/colpo-di-stato-in-russia/ on Sat, 24 Jun 2023 13:26:05 +0000.