Be Wary of a Wounded Putin
World,Ukraine War,Russia,Belarus,Vladimir Putin,Wagner Group,Yevgeny Prigozhin,Defense And Security,Foreign Policy
It will be a long time, if ever, before we know the backstory to the Prigozhin mutiny, starting, perhaps, with an accurate answer to the question of why Prigozhin was not reined in when his questioning of the way the war in Ukraine was being fought had shifted from being that of a loyal, if outspoken, courtier to something more threatening. And then there’s the small matter of the Kremlin’s failure to stop the Wagner column — something surely within the capability of Russia’s air force — long before it reached Rostov-on-Don, a failure that made not only Putin, but Russia itself, seem weak. With a population of over a million, Rostov is one of Russia’s largest cities, not some obscure provincial outpost, and it fell to the mutineers without a fight.
