MOSCOW The ruckus around the Wagner mercenary company began to thicken into open rebellion about a week ago.
Now the Kremlin is trying to minimize the harm that the short-lived rebellion caused the president Vladimir Putin for the image.
In Derbent, Dagestan in the North Caucasus, on Wednesday, a completely different Vladimir Putin was shown than in a long time.
In the photos, Putin walks into the crowd, hugs and shakes hands with people, poses with a young woman for a selfie.
Gone was the solitary figure seen at the end of the long table, on the grand but empty staircase, and at state ceremonies.
Of course, Derbent’s appearance among conspiracy theorists once again raised talk of the use of double beings.
Russian state television explained the significance of the event holding hands for those who might have been unclear.
– Judging from these extremely emotional pictures, the president was received in a way that leaves even rock stars in their shadow, presenter Olga Skabeyeva rejoiced on the state-run Rossija 1 channel.
Skabeyeva reminded the audience that the “collective West” has said that the president’s authority has weakened Yevgeny Prigozhin After the mutiny of the Wagner forces.
– Putin shows that it is just the opposite, Skabeyeva rejoiced.
On the other hand, it is descriptivethat Putin by no means went to visit Rostov-on-Don, which was conquered by the Wagner forces over the weekend, nor in the Voronezh region, where the Wagner forces traveled and fought battles against the air equipment of the armed forces.
Putin is on the lookout for opportunities where citizens could bring painful issues to the table outside the Kremlin’s script.
The event in Derbent would hardly have been organized if the Kremlin did not have a very urgent need to show that Putin and the people are one.
The Kremlin’s reputation repair operation seems to be focusing to these two lines: to emphasize national unity and on the other hand to smear Prigožin and his associates.
Editor-in-chief of the Internet publication Republic.ru Dmitri Kolezev write On Twitter, the Kremlin has now decided in which light the rebellion will be presented.
According to Kolezev’s source, the purpose is to emphasize the “commercial” nature of the rebellion: Prigozhin was struggling for his money and those who helped him were bought.
The rebellion had no political significance, it did not aim for justice or even power, but simply “puddle”, writes Kolezev.
This campaign is clearly already underway. On Tuesday, Putin told the public that the Wagner mercenary company has lived entirely on the funding of the Russian state.
At the same time, Putin revealed what a money pit Prigozhin’s services have been for the state.
According to Putin, Wagner’s activities were financed from May of last year to May of this year with more than 86.3 billion rubles. Exchange rates have fluctuated wildly, but at the current official exchange rate it would be around 910 million euros.
In addition, Prigozhin’s catering company received 80 billion rubles a year from its food deliveries to the Ministry of Defense.
It is very possible that an economic crime investigation is underway against Prigožin, who was acquitted of rebellion charges.
For the state media RT, the head of the defense committee of the Duma Andrei Kartapolov explained Prigozhin’s rebellion project by the fact that he was losing the Wagner company’s income from a “military special operation” because Prigozhin had not agreed to the registration of the company’s soldiers under the Ministry of Defense.
– And for Mr. Prigozhin, money is not an insignificant factor. It could be that they are even a decisive factor, Kartapolov explained.
The purpose is, of course, to neutralize The populist message spread by Prigozhin about the corrupt elites, who with their greed have ruined the war of aggression in Ukraine.
The hook is catchy to the point that there is probably a strong grain of truth in it. Prigozhin is in many ways worked like a condottiere, a medieval Italian mercenary commander who, in the middle of a war, goes with his troops to renegotiate the terms of his contract.
of the Levada opinion research institute in surveys Prigozhin’s popularity seems to have already declined because of the rebellion. While on Thursday and Friday 58 percent approved of Prigožin’s actions, at the beginning of the week it had dropped to 30 percent.
Of course, the results of opinion polls should be treated with caution in wartime conditions.
A general favored by Prigozhin Sergei Surovikin an information campaign is also being planned, Kolezev writes on Twitter.
The purpose is to weaken the general’s support among the troops. According to Kolezev’s information, the intention is to spread, for example, claims that the general transported cocaine with Prigozhin on airplanes.
If the information circulated on Wednesday evening about the arrest are indeed true, Musta Pekka has caught General Surovik in the game.
A Russian, among others, has told about the arrest based on his sources The Moscow Times and British The Financial Times.
Surovikin is burdened by the fact that he was Prigožin’s favorite for the new Chief of General Staff.
The New York Times told earlierthat according to US intelligence, Surovikin had prior knowledge of Prigozhin’s coup project.
There is no official information about the arrest or imprisonment. The fate of Surovikin was unclear at the time of writing.
Baza news channel operating in the Telegram messaging service told of Surovik Veronica-daughter to inform that the general has not been arrested and that everything is fine with him.
Važnye Istorii or iStories publication by investigative journalists tellsthat Surovikin would have been interrogated but he would have been released.
As long as nothing is official, it may still happen that Surovik will survive the situation.
He has a reputation as a brutal but competent warlord, and skills the Russian armed forces would badly need now that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway.
At the same time, there seems to be some trading going on about what happens to the organizations built by Prigožin.
If Thursday morning’s information about Prigozhin’s return to Russia is true, it is probably about further negotiations of the agreement concluded at the weekend.
In mercenary operations, the division has profitable projects in Africa. Prigozhin’s media empire, on the other hand, has engaged in propaganda work and information influence in support of Putin’s regime.
According to The Bell, a website focused on business news, Prigozhin’s media holdings may end up in the hands of Putin’s close ally, the oligarch Yuri Kovalchuk For the Natsionalnaja Media Gruppa company.
According to The Bell, regardless of who ends up getting Prigozhin’s media holdings, their operations will henceforth be directly controlled by the presidential administration.
It is also possible that despite everything, the Kremlin still needs Prigozhin’s services – possibly because of his important African contacts – and therefore gave him the opportunity on Saturday to stop his rebellion and save his life.
There have also been speculations on Telegram channelsthat the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov would be moved aside due to military operations but not the General Staff.
It could be a compromise by which the Russian leadership appeases the members of the armed forces who are dissatisfied with the military leadership and the hard-line nationalist circles who are passionately in favor of the war.
At the same time, the Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu seems to at least still maintain its position. Putin has not been happy to make personnel changes under pressure.
In public, however, there is a winner President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. He could appear as a mediator and peacemaker, whose efforts managed to avoid bloodshed between the Wagner mercenaries and the official Russian armed forces.
It is difficult to know how important a role Lukashenko actually played in the negotiations with Prigozhin, but the leader of Belarus took all the joy out of the incident.
He was able to play his role of the popular but secretive collective farm manager again.
Carnegie Center Scholar Maxim Samorukov pondersthat from the leader of an independent European state, Lukashenka is turning into one of the heavyweights in Russia’s internal politics or the “Russian world”.
In that world With Igor Seshin is a fiefdom of the Rosneft oil company, With Ramzan Kadyrov Chechnya, Prigozhin had his Wagner company and Lukashenko had Belarus.
In any case, the aftershocks of last weekend’s uprising will certainly continue for a long time.