Russian President Vladimir Putin became “paralyzed” with indecision and was “unable to act decisively” when Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin sent his mercenaries marching toward Moscow — even though he had advance knowledge of the planned uprising, according to a new report.
Putin, 70, who has spent decades cultivating his persona as a resolute “tough guy” leader, allegedly issued no orders to crush the mutiny for most of the day on June 24 as the Kremlin descended into a state of “dismay and confusion,” Ukrainian and European intelligence sources told The Washington Post.
There was no immediate response to Pirgozhin’s armed uprising aimed at overthrowing Russia’s military leadership over its handling of the Ukraine war coming from Putin, despite the fact that domestic security services had warned him two to three days earlier that his former ally was possibly plotting an insurrection, The Washington Post reported.
The heads-up about the threat led to some security upgrades at the Kremlin and other important sites, but little beyond that.
“Putin had time to take the decision to liquidate [the rebellion] and arrest the organizers,” said a European security official, speaking to the paper on condition of anonymity. “Then when it began to happen, there was paralysis on all levels …There was absolute dismay and confusion. For a long time, they did not know how to react.”
The lack of orders from him left local officials in Russia to decide for themselves how to respond to Prigozhin’s mutiny, leading some of them to grant free passage to Wagner mercenaries.
Many regional officials were under the impression that Prigozhin must have been acting with the Kremlin’s tacit approval, which could explain why they failed to stop the private army’s march from its base in Rostov-on-Don to the outskirts of Moscow, according to security officials.
“The local authorities did not receive any commands from the leadership,” said a senior Ukrainian security official. “When the leadership is in turmoil and disarray, it the same situation at the local level and even worse.”
A high-ranking Russian diplomat confirmed that there was “disarray” and disagreements within Russia’s leadership.
“For some time, they did not know how to react,” the source said, echoing recent comments by CIA Director William Burns, who said that for much of the uprising’s duration, Russia’s leaders “appeared to be adrift.”
That would explain why Putin allowed Prigozhin’s fighters to come within 120 miles of Moscow, before the outspoken billionaire pulled the plug on the mutiny after accepting a truce brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
As part of the peace deal, Putin agreed to drop all charges against Prigozhin if he agreed to stand down and relocate his private army to Belarus.
Had Prigozhin’s coup succeeded, some top figures in Moscow potentially would have rallied behind him, according to a senior NATO official speaking to The Washington Post, who said that they were those who seemed to have been “waiting for this.”
But even in its failure, the insurrection, which posed the biggest challenge to Putin’s rule in 23 years, had exposed some potentially catastrophic chinks in his armor, according to people familiar with the matter.
“Russia is a country of mafia rules, and Putin made an unforgivable mistake,” said a senior Moscow financier with ties to the intelligence services. “He lost his reputation as the toughest man in town.”
Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB officer and Russian lawmaker now living in exile, sounded a similar note, arguing that Putin was revealed to be an ineffective leader incapable protecting the powerful elites.
“Putin showed himself to be a person who is not able to make serious, important and quick decisions in critical situations,” Gudkov said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rushed to dismiss The Washington Post’s reporting, claiming that the intelligence assessments cited in the article were “nonsense” and shared “by people who have zero information.”
In an interview published by Kommersant earlier this month, Putin said that during a three-hour meeting with Prigozhin and dozens of Wagner mercenaries held just five days after the failed uprising, he offered the men a chance to continue fighting in Ukraine under the leadership of a veteran commander.
Prigozhin, however, rejected Putin’s offer, telling him that “the boys won’t agree with such a decision.”
For more than three weeks, Prigozhin’s fate and whereabouts remained unknown, but last Wednesday a video posted on Telegram appeared to show the renegade Wagner chief greeting his fighters in Belarus, marking his first public appearance since the botched uprising.
