This weekend we witnessed one of Russia's most anti-climactic coup attempts in recent memory. What the hell was this Wagner march on Moscow? Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Kremlin-backed mercenary army known as the Wagner Group, vowed to launch a holy crusade against the military leadership in Russia, who he felt led the nation into war with Ukraine under false pretenses and attacked his troops.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, have long been targets of Prigozhin for their apparent incompetence. He led his forces from southern Russia toward the capital but stopped short, around 200 kilometers from the city. Prigozhin allegedly had 25,000 men under his command, which wasn't enough to take Moscow – and no doubt that wasn't the size of the force approaching. This matter appears to be a Russian-centric drama, but Biden decided to give Putin propaganda material.
First, let's discuss the ending of this charade. Prigozhin will be allowed to live in exile in Belarus, and the criminal charges for rebellion will be dropped. Wagner mercenaries also won't be charged, but some are smartly opting to follow Prigozhin into Belarus, which Putin is allowing, while also claiming that he would have crushed the insurrection. We'll see – Valdy reportedly fled Moscow when hostilities broke out. This must be the worst coup attempt ever since the two high-ranking Russian military officials remain at their posts, Putin is still in power, and the uprising leader is exiled. Supposedly, the real grievance Prigozhin had was that his mercenary forces were bound to be formally absorbed into the Russian military, which is bogged down in Ukraine.
The irony here is that while it might not seem now that Prigozhin was serious about toppling the Putin regime, a more significant force with a more determined leader who wanted to boot the existing order might have had a chance.
Putin claims he would have been able to crush the rebellion, and he got some help crafting the perfect piece of state-media theater in the aftermath of this incident from Joe Biden, who just had to say the CIA had no part in this operation (via NBC News):
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President Joe Biden on Monday insisted that Western leaders were not involved in a mutiny attempt in Russia over the weekend, speaking publicly for the first time since Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin mobilized his private military forces against Russia’s leadership.
Prigozhin led an armed insurrection that marched toward Moscow before ordering his troops to stand down on Saturday, triggering concerns over potential unrest in Russia.
Biden said he was in constant contact with U.S. allies to coordinate their response to the standoff between President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Prigozhin, a former close ally who runs Wagner on the battlefield in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Biden said U.S. and its allies, including NATO, wanted to prevent a perception that Americans had stoked the mutiny.
“They agree with me that we had to make sure we gave Putin no excuse ... to blame this on the West, to blame this on NATO,” Biden said of U.S. allies in remarks from the White House on Monday. “We made clear that we were not involved, that we had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”
Biden said he instructed his national security advisers to prepare for a range of scenarios, but that it was still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about the implications of the weekend’s event for Russia and Ukraine.
“The ultimate outcome of all this remains to be seen,” Biden added.
I don't believe we had any part in it, but if we did and Joe was involved, no wonder it failed. Biden has 40 years of failure in the foreign policy realm. Also, you don't think Putin will weaponize these remarks from a fragile old man who's also a serial liar? NATO is his enemy. It doesn't matter if it's true; Moscow probably blamed us anyway. There's no win here, so why even bother saying anything? They can craft their own scripts; Joe didn't need to give them one with him standing behind the seal of the presidency.
Also, the last time the US was accused of being behind a coup was against the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 2002. That, too, wasn't a successful attempt. If the CIA is still in the coup business, and I'm sure they are, they've become the Chicago Bears in that department.
