"Dead Men Walking": James Risen on How the Wagner Revolt Threatens Both Putin & Prigozhin

this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman in New York with democracy Now co-host Juan Gonzalez in Chicago Taiwan hi Amy and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world We Begin Today's Show with developments in Russia as they embattled head of Russia's Wagner group has reportedly arrived in Belarus to live in Exile earlier

today the Kremlin said it had dropped criminal charges against Wagner chief evgeny pagosian after he led a mutiny that saw an armored column of Russian mercenaries Advanced within 120 miles of Moscow on Monday pagosian published his first public statements since calling off the Mutiny on Saturday saying his forces were reacting to an attack by Russia's military that killed dozens of Wagner Fighters none of the Wagner

Fighters was forced to take part in this March everybody knew its final goal the goal of the March was to avoid destruction of the Wagner PMC and bring to responsibility those responsible whose unprofessional actions caused a huge number of mistakes during the special military operation our decision to turn around was based on two important factors the first factor is that we did not want to shed

Russian blood the second factor is that we were registering our protests and not seeking to overthrow the government of the country this comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Russian soldiers outside the Kremlin today praising them for their defense of Russia's capital which he said quote essentially prevented a civil war Russia's Riya news agency reported Putin also spoke Tuesday with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed

bin Salman who offered his support Putin attempted to reassert his authority in a national address Monday and I'm the Rebellion would have been suppressed in any case the organizers of the Rebellion despite being inadequate could not fail to understand this however the organizers of the Rebellion betraying their country their people betrayed those who lured them into the crime they lied to them push them towards death

on the fire to shoot their own people it was precisely this outcome that Russia's enemy wanted both the Neo-Nazi and Kiev and their Western Masters and all sorts of national traitors meanwhile in Ukraine president vlodimir zielinski visited soldiers on the front lines and used his nightly addressed to praise Ukrainian troops for advancing quote in all directions for more we begin Today's Show with James risen the

two-time Pulitzer prize-winning reporter formerly with the New York Times now with the intercept where he is senior National Security correspondent Jim risen covered the 1991 attempted coup in Moscow for the Los Angeles Times his latest article for The Intercept is headline for Goshen and Putin Dead Men Walking In The Duel between the Wagner groups Evgeni pagosian and Russian President Vladimir Putin both men lost their nerve

in a moment we're going to talk about your new book The Last honest man but first Jim let's talk about this latest breaking news out of Russia why do you refer to progosian and Putin as Dead Men Walking well I think uh pregosian is clearly a threat as long as he's alive to Putin and Putin has thrown a lot of people out of Windows for a

lot less than what progosian has done pagosia now can claim that he wasn't really trying to Stage a coup but it sure looked like a coup to everybody else including Putin and I think he you know he came so close to uh Moscow and so close to seizing power and then he seems to have lost his nerve and cut a last-second deal with Putin through lukashenko

the Belarus dictator and that now he's kind of skulking off to Belarus in Exile and I don't think it's possible for Putin to allow him to continue to pose a threat to him from Belarus and if if we've seen anything from Putin's track record it's that he kills his opponents or anybody he he thinks threatens his power and he's done it to people as I said

earlier to people who've posed much less of a threat to him than pagosian does and I think with Putin he's been so weakened by this and it's as he's been exposed as a much weaker leader than anybody realized I think this will embolden a lot of his opponents both in Russia and outside I think it's going to embolden Ukraine and NATO to stand up more uh

consistently to Russia and to Putin and I think it's really a devastating event for his future as a leader I think I don't think he can survive much longer unless he takes some more far more dramatic action against uh pregosian than he has in the past uh but memorize it in terms of the the the the the causes of this Revolt to begin with I mean

this claim of purgation that his forces were attacked by the Russian military which again would like many uh events in this war it's quite hard to tell what actually happened versus uh what is being claimed to happen because there apparently had been an attempt by the Russian government to bring all of these private military groups under the military uh and uh not only the Wagner group

but there are several other private military groups that are functioning as part of the Russian uh war effort uh so was this really did this attempt uh this attack happen as far as you can tell does it but I it's still unclear whether it really happened or whether it's part of pagosian's disinformation campaign because he's you know that's what he's he's really good at disinformation just

like Putin is um so it's unclear but clearly I think far earlier than this supposed bombing you know Putin I mean pagosian was planning this I think it's pretty obvious he was planning this for quite some time and maybe he used some rocket attack uh as a predicate for a justification for going forward I think you know the fact that he was able to march from

Ukraine into rostov and then North with virtually no opposition from the Russian military or the Russian Security Services must have been shocking to Putin and I think is is going to embolden all of Putin's uh any Rivals that he has inside Russia you know he is he has as I said earlier he's killed off of most of his major Rivals and I just don't see how

he's going to let pragosian live for very long put no I'm sorry go ahead I wanted to read a comment um uh email that we got from the executive secretary of the Ukrainian pacifist movement Yuri Shelia jenko he wrote To Us quote I think the main lesson of the Wagner Mutiny is that Russian militarists including even war criminals like Putin and pagosian are capable of negotiating

and stopping Bloodshed this is an additional argument why it's not only necessary for humanitarian reasons but also it must be possible to cease fire in Ukraine and start peace talks not prolong the war for multiple decades he's saying in this case though he calls them both war criminals this should not be viewed as weakness but as an opening for negotiation even with the overall War Jim

your thoughts yeah I think that's an interesting idea um I think it's possible that this may be the moment of weakness for Putin where maybe the West should see if he's ready to get out of Ukraine um I think if he was smart he would pull his troops out of Ukraine now to solidify his power in Russia uh you know one of one of the vulnerabilities

that pagosian exposed for Putin was that he had so much of the Russian army and Security Services in Ukraine that the door was open for progosian to almost March right into Moscow and so for a dictator like Putin it's got to give you pause about how long you want to stay in Ukraine um so yeah I mean it might be a you might see some possible

of that I don't think that's going to happen I think what uh to me what Ukraine what the war in Ukraine has shown is that uh Russia will attack right that Putin prior to the Ukraine Invasion I don't know how he feels now after uh the war has gone so badly but he clearly was interested in trying to re rebuild the Soviet Union uh in some

fashion you know I think his he's gained much more control over Belarus he's fought uh Wars in Georgia and uh now in Ukraine and so but all of those countries uh have one thing in common which is that they are not in NATO he has not attacked any NATO country and I think I think the fact that the Baltic states Lithuania Latvia and Estonia are in

NATO uh has made them uh an area that he's not going to attack even though I think he would love to have the Baltic state it's back in the Russian Empire and the same for Poland and other parts of what used to be known as the Warsaw Pact so I think I don't think that NATO is going to turn back I think in fact once the

war has ended I would bet a lot of money that Ukraine will join NATO