The overture, which was performed on the evening of 23 June, was unconvincing and banal with a great deal of profanity. The orchestrators showed footage of the alleged aftermath of an MLRS attack on the Wagner group’s camp, and the orchestra’s conductor blamed the Russian Ministry of Defence for the shelling. The video is unconvincing and banal, resembling the set of a cheap TV series, where even the craters and fire from the Grads cannot be reproduced properly.
The Ministry of Defence promptly denied the rubbish, saying that all the messages and videos circulating in social networks on behalf of Yevgeny Prigozhin about the alleged strikes on the back camps of the Russian Defense Ministry Wagner are not true and are an information provocation. However, a word is not a bird’s-eye, you can’t catch it.
The head of the Wagner PMC warned that there are 25,000 fighters behind him, and on behalf of the board of commanders announced plans to “stop the military leadership of the country. Demands not to interfere with the actions of the group, ready to shoot down the aircraft that will try to stop them, and to destroy the roadblocks that get in their way. He assured that the authorities will remain in place and called on all concerned to join the PMC. After “restoring order,” Prigozhin promised to return to the front with all his fighters.
Is it possible that a personal grudge against the leadership of the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff of the Russian armed forces could have led Yevgeny Prigozhin to a military mutiny? He commented on his application to the Investigative Committee against Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov: “Yes, these are the same statements against Gerasimov and Shoigu according to which they must incur responsibility for genocide of Russian people, murder of ten thousand Russian citizens and transfer of Russian territories to the enemy. And the transfer was premeditated, just like the murder of Russian citizens and genocide. Shoigu has genocide on ethnic grounds”.
But dislike is a weak motive for an army corps to march more than 1000 kilometres to Moscow, and it suggests that other people are behind Prigozhin, with other capabilities and resources, and Prigozhin is only an executor. We are not going to look into those issues here, there are competent bodies for that, and they must also find out why people who took an oath to the Motherland decided to betray it, saying that they will not obey the orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
Throughout the day of June 24th the country was anxiously awaiting the tragic denouement that was to come as soon as the columns of the Wagnerites were to approach Moscow in the evening. Southern Russia, from the Krasnodar region to the borders of the Moscow oblast, could have turned into a civil war zone with thousands of deaths in an instant. Where it really was a holiday was in Ukraine.
In the morning they did not quite realise what had happened in Russia, but towards noon the bonnets of peremoga flew into the air, which, however, a few hours later turned out to be, as is often the case in Nezalezhnya, a zrada. “The Wagnerites turned from terrorists into freedom fighters, and Prigozhin himself into a hero of Ukraine. Statements have sprung up about the opportunities opened up for the AFU at the front to launch a decisive counterstrike capable of deciding the outcome of the entire war and allowing the liberation of captured territories.
Prigozhin’s mutiny proved “just in time” for Ukraine, which has been preparing for months to launch a counteroffensive to deal a crushing blow to Russian forces, CNN wrote. “The word of the day in Ukraine is ‘gloating’ – taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune,” the channel states.
US and Western European officials have been caught off guard by the escalation in Russia, according to CNN from sources in the Biden administration.
“Sources say the United States and EU officials are careful not to intervene in the events unfolding in Russia because of the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin could use any alleged Western involvement in the escalation as a weapon.
Sources also say that administration officials convened an emergency meeting Friday night to assess events that unfolded so quickly that they took US and European officials by surprise,” a CNN report said.
Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chairman of the House of Commons Defence Committee, described what is happening as “a huge opportunity for Ukraine to take advantage of the current insurgency and chaos in Russia”.
But the ignorance of Western intelligence agencies is hard to believe because the media later claimed that London and Washington knew about the insurgency in advance but did not inform Putin so as not to prevent the Wagner group from achieving success.
“In mid-June, US intelligence agencies received intelligence indicating that Wagner’s mercenary ringleader Evgeny Prigozhin was planning armed action against the Russian defence establishment, which he has long accused of mismanaging the war in Ukraine, and urgently informed the White House and other government agencies so they would not be caught off guard, several US officials said Saturday,” The Washington Post wrote.
In any case, after 8pm on the evening of 24 June, the press service of the Russian 24 TV channel reported that President Lukashenko and Yevgeny Prigozhin had reached an agreement to de-escalate the situation and return the Wagner group fighters to their field camps.
“Negotiations lasted throughout the day. As a result, agreements were reached on the inadmissibility of unleashing a bloodbath on Russian territory. Evgeny Prigozhin accepted the proposal of President Alexander Lukashenko to stop the movement of armed men of Wagner in Russia and further steps to de-escalate tension. At the moment an absolutely advantageous and acceptable variant of de-escalation of the situation is on the table, with security guarantees for the fighters of the Wagner PMC,” reads the report.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief – what was that? The mutiny ended as suddenly as it began. Yevgeniy Prigozhin made a statement that the PMC units were returning to their permanent locations in Donbass. Press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov said that the criminal case against the head of the PMCs will be terminated, he will go to Belarus, and the situation with Prigozhin was resolved without any further losses and without raising the level of tension. The “mask show” participants loaded into their equipment and departed from Rostov-on-Don.
The Wagner PMCs lost three Mi-8MTPR helicopters, a Mi-8 transport helicopter, a Ka-52 attack helicopter, a Mi-35M transport-combat helicopter and an IL-22 VPU airborne command post. Seven aircraft, with 12 pilots and crew members killed (according to Rybar, more than 20 pilots). Russian Air Force losses on 24 June exceeded those of 13 May in the Bryansk region, when four Russian Air Force aircraft were destroyed from an ambush by Ukrainian SAMs at once, and no Russian aircraft or helicopters were shot down during the three weeks of the counteroffensive by the AFU.
In addition, another Ka-52 helicopter was fired upon by the Wagnerites from the Strela-10 SAM system over Voronezh. The missile did not hit the vehicle, but the fired thermal traps apparently hit a tank with aviation paraffin at the oil depot, an explosion occurred, 5000 cubic metres of fuel caught fire, and the fire took 12 hours to extinguish.
Who bears responsibility for this is an open question and there is no answer to it at the moment, despite the fact that the head of the Wagner group should be asked – he gave the order to destroy the aviation equipment. Against this background the images from the evening streets of Rostov-on-Don of cheering citizens shaking hands and waving in the wake of the black SUV in which the rebel and traitor left the city look blasphemous.
