Qualified, on Saturday June 24, as ” stab in the back by Russian President Vladimir Putin, it is an understatement to say that this mutiny by Yevgueni Prigojine, leader of the paramilitary group Wagner, stunned the press.
” The confusion », Launches the front page of Parisian this Sunday, June 25. As the newspaper points out, as of June 24, “theWestern capitals locked themselves in, between amazement and intelligence gathering (…) The phones were hot all day “. In The Parisian on SundayA ” familiar with the Quai d’Orsay – in other words, a diplomatic source of this newspaper – believes that this “ turning “in the war will probably” further disorganize the Russian army, increase its losses and demobilization. And, encourage the Ukrainians to accelerate their counterattack “. Seeing it ” a blow for Putin, his credibility, his authority », this same source predicts in The Parisian that ” his authoritarian allies will lose faith in him. The Chinese, the Iranians, the Turks don’t like weak and losing allies. The Russian president wanted to be all-powerful in the face of a supposedly decadent West. The myth of Putin the invincible, it’s overi! “.
For its part, from the first hours of the mutiny, on Saturday June 24, the newspaper The world saw in the Prigozhin mutiny a devastating revealer of the state (…) of Russia “, a state “ reduced to the deadly competition of factions”, Le Monde saw in this attempted coup “the stripping of Putin’s Russia”.
fool’s day
Without waiting, Saturday, June 24, the international press evoked a real “ open war ” in Russia. Thus, in Germany, the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung did he see a mortal threat for Putin, pointing out that if the conflicts in the ” higher spheres of the Kremlin are part of his reign, ” none have ever been so out of control. Therefore, the rebellion of Wagner’s mercenaries is extremely threatening for the president wanted to believe the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
In the United Kingdom, the Secretary of State for Defense estimated in the newspaper The Guardian that the armed offensive launched from Prigozhin represented “ the biggest challenge for the Russian state in recent years “. Prudently, however, Ben Wallace preferred to wait “ the hours to come ” in order to check “ the loyalty of Russian security forces, especially the National Guard towards Vladimir Putin. The Guardian also pointed out that in Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni discerned in the armed rebellion launched by Yevgueni Prigojine “ a backlash for Vladimir Putin “, the Italian government ensuring to follow closely the evolution of the situation in Russia, seeing there a consequence of the aggression of Ukraine provoking “ instability inside Russian territory “, therefore underlines The Guardian.
And, while in Italy itself, the newspaper La Repubblica cautiously confined itself to noting that NATO ” monitor the situation ” in Russian.
The American site Politico reproached Vladimir Putin for having brought up “ the specter of a civil war” in his country, by denouncing a ” treason “ and calling on Wagner’s mutineers to desert. “A sign that the threat of civil war is not rhetorical “, the Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, ” one of the strongest supporters of [la Russie] in the war in Ukraine “, announced to send troops on Russian soil to fight Wagner’s mercenaries, reported yesterday Politico. But that was before. Before Prigojine’s coup de theater, which stopped its march towards Moscow. A real fool’s day.