The insurrection won’t stop the war: Prigozhin shares Putin’s aims in Ukraine. But a distracted Russia is good for the world
Once again Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has taken a turn he never expected. The Russian leader’s brief speech denouncing the Wagner group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin, and what appears to be a significant mutiny, showed he knows just how dangerous the situation could be for him – but if he has a convincing plan for how to deal with it, he didn’t share it.
Putin compared Prigozhin’s actions to the “intrigues” that he said brought down the Russian army, and then the state itself, in 1917. He’s not wrong – this is not unlike the way Russian army units left the front en masse during that military collapse.
Keir Giles works with the Russia and Eurasia programme of Chatham House; he is the author of Russia’s War on Everybody
