Mutiny in Russia: Nina Khrushcheva on How the Wagner Revolt Exposes Putin's Weakness

this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman We Begin Today's Show in Russia where the government's working to restore calm after a short-lived armed Mutiny was launched Friday by the Wagner mercenary group Wagner Fighters stopped their Advance on the outskirts of Moscow late Saturday after officials reached a deal that guaranteed their safety they also withdrew from the southern Russian city of

rustoff which they had seized and returned to their bases as part of the deal Wagner group Chief Evgeni pregosian agreed to go into Exile in Belarus where President Alexander lukashenko is a close Ally of Putin lukashenko mediated the deal the Kremlin also said the Wagner group had and his Fighters would avoid criminal charges despite the Revolt though today that's now being called into question today's State

control TV in Russia showed footage of Defense Minister Sergey shoigu meeting with Russian military officers in Ukraine though it's unclear when that footage was from also today in Russian TV prime minister Mikhail mishustan made the first public comments by a senior Russian official since the deal was made Russia is going through an important time in its history as the president noted we're actually the entire military

economic information machine of the West is directed against us we need to make calculated unified decisions to effectively achieve goals set by the leader of the state this comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin made a brief National address Saturday and refrain from mentioning the Wagner group leader by name but denounced his actions as treason we will protect both our people and our statehood from any threats

including internal betrayal and what we are facing is precisely betrayal excessive Ambitions and vested interests have led to treason betrayal of the country its people and the cause for which the soldiers and commanders of the Wagner group had fought and died for side by side with our other units meanwhile Ukrainian president vlodimir zelensky said in his nightly video address Saturday the Revolt by the Wagner mercenary

troops in Russia had exposed chaos in the country at one point he switched to his native language of Russian to address Russians and Putin I will say it in Russian the man from the Kremlin is obviously very afraid and probably hiding somewhere not showing himself I am sure that he is no longer in Moscow he calls somewhere and asks for something he knows what he is

afraid of because he himself created the threat all evil all losses all hatred he himself who spreads it what will we ukrainians do we will defend our country we will defend our freedom we will not be silent and we will not be inactive we know how to win and it will happen and what will you do the longer your troops stand Ukrainian land the more Devastation

they will bring to Russia the longer this person is in the Kremlin the more disasters there will be on Sunday U.S Secretary of State Anthony blinken said the Wagner group Rebellion revealed cracks in Putin's power he spoke on ABC News so I think this is clearly uh we see cracks emerging where they go if if anywhere when they get there very hard to say I don't

want to speculate on it but I don't think we've seen the Final Act this has been a devastating strategic failure for Putin across virtually every front economic military geopolitical standing this comes as NATO Secretary General Yen stoltenberg said Monday the aborted Rebellion demonstrates the scale of the Kremlin strategic mistaken Waging War in Ukraine the events over the weekend are an internal Russian matter and yet another

demonstration of the big strategic mistake that President Putin made with his legal annexation or his legal annexation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine as Russia continues its assault it is even more important to continue our support to Ukraine We Begin our coverage in Moscow where we're joined by Nina khrushcheva professor of international Affairs at the new school great granddaughter of the former Soviet Premier Nikita

Khrushchev her books include the Lost Khrushchev journey into the gulag of the Russian mind and in Putin's footsteps searching for the soul of an Empire across Russia's 11 time zones Professor krisheva welcome back to democracy now it's great to have you with us so this is the first show we've done since the Wagner Rebellion we haven't seen progosian though they said he's going to go into

Exile in Belarus we also haven't seen Putin since he gave that speech on Saturday and now there are all sorts of questions that though the Kremlin said that all of the Wagner folks including pagosian would be granted would have the charges dropped that's not clear right now you're in Moscow you've walked the streets what is the understanding of what happened among the Russian people well thank

you Emmy uh there's a little bit of a relief although in Moscow at least there was very um kind of almost confidence not confidence but certainty that it's not going to go far enough it's going to be resolved very quickly that it's just so inconceivable although what's inconceivable in Russia nowadays uh is a stretch but uh that that precaution uh is not going to take over

the Kremlin although now we're learning for example that about billions and billions of rubles have been taken from the banks on Saturday when it was all going on then the flights have been filled and the prices the airline prices double the triple so people were preparing for the worst but what when I walked around even in the afternoon when the uh when the Wagner troops were

were going and approaching approaching approaching Moscow they were still sort of a disbelief that it can result in anything but resolution which indeed happened by 10 o'clock on Saturday uh Putin supposedly has won he would have won much better if indeed as you mentioned after that very fiery speech and very angry speech because pregosian was his creation priguration exists because Putin fed him allowed him to

be allowed this military uh mercenary groups to be uh to be formed if Putin on that Saturday Saturday night when Alexander lukashenko said we resolved it I helped and so great that Gregorian came out and said were resolved that when Putin himself would have come out and explained to the Russians and to everybody how that treason that he so firmly hated uh in the morning on

Saturday then being resolved because it really was a military Mutiny and yet somehow they're going to be pardon and Putin is absolutely silent it's not that the pardon is in question but the um attorney general office is saying that we it's we're still working on it it's still not clear how soon the charges could be dropped so I don't think it's a question it's whether they

are continuing to have some sort of negotiation and would be very interesting to hear when piguetan in fact gets to build a ruse if he does in fact uh get to Belarus in one piece um if you can talk about the significance of uh the place where the Rebellion um took over a city of over a million people rustoff which is really the Central Command of

the war on Ukraine and the fact that the Russian people and did you see this on Russian television or in social media and there is a question about will Putin allow all this social media to continue the cheering of Ferguson uh by the people people taking selfies with him this is before we no longer saw him well uh yes it was rastophon Don it's very south

very close to Ukraine and so the speculation we don't know but uh supposedly and most likely they've been some um kind of it wasn't just precaution walking but it was a coordinated uh some coordinated effort including probably with the people in the Army because he was able to in fact have a meeting with two higher-ups in the Russian army uh his uh great concern a kind

of great hatred is for a minister of defense Sergey shoigu and these are the people that worked with soygu and suddenly they were there uh in the headquarters and he was kind of humiliating them uh being being present so and I think it seems to me that Prego and others they was a little bit of a hope and clearly didn't work out the way they wanted

it uh that uh at least the um some in the in the Russian army in the Russian command very disillusioned with the way the war in Ukraine is is going on would probably be more supportive that didn't work out so the original uh the original idea was there that's why they were not shot on uh the precautionites were not shot on but then uh clearly the

the move was was fizzled out so the question is how uh really and now in the for the future how really uh strong uh the support for Putin will remain and how really many uh factions that probably are in the Russian army or are in the Russian Elites how much they will continue to gel together behind the uh behind the Kremlin leader the negotiations were going

on obviously right from the beginning and uh in some ways because miscalculated which left him weak but also if Putin came out a Victor it also didn't really show him in in the strong light either so it ends as uh zilinsky president zilinski correctly uh pointed out it adds to more discombobulation among the Russian Elite and also the future of Russia and the future of the

war in Ukraine I mean as not only a professor of international Affairs Nina krisheva but as the great granddaughter of Khrushchev you certainly know Russia's history well um is this us quashed Rebellion or is this the beginning of cracks in the Putin edifice go back to 1991 go back to other failed coups and what happened next well that's a fascinating question because it is I mean

it is a squash quashed rebellion in a sense but it's also and I would even disagree with uh Anthony blink in it it's the beginning because we've seen right from the beginning of the war uh almost a year and a half ago that there is really not much coherency in uh in Putin's Entourage yes they kind of have to say they support it but it's very

unequal sometimes the voice is for sometimes voices again some again sometimes voices of more reason and whatnot they appear so that's that solidity that Putin was able to display until 2022 has been really uh waning away for the whole year plus so this is just another moment of this uh of this kind of uh for falling apart uh in cracks I think the interesting part of

this rebellion and I cannot really speak to history tree here because basically what we're seeing is Putin's a right-wing government is a militancy uh and and nationalism is part of its agenda pregosian is a bloody nationalism bloody militancy almost complete fascism uh is part of its agenda so we really haven't because before as you mentioned 91 it was the Liberals against uh the reformers against the

non-reformers against the hotline as most coups have been like that this is we have one uh kind of blatant fascists more latent uh latent uh or less bloody nationalist versus extreme bloody nationalism and that's something that I cannot remember uh at least in recent Russian history ever happening I wanted to go to the voice of progosian on Saturday the Wagner Chief said in a recording that

was on telegram he'd ordered his Fighters who'd been advancing on Moscow to turn around and return to their bases in order to avoid spilling Russian blood um they want to disband the Wagner military company we embarked on a March of Justice on June 23rd in 24 hours we got to within 200 kilometers of Moscow and this time we did not spill a single drop of our

Fighter's blood now the moment has come when blood can be spilled understanding that Russian blood would be spilled on one side we're turning our columns around and going back to field camps as planned I mean he had called it a March of justice but what really changed for him to turn around did anything unpredictable happen I mean in fact wasn't it the opposite uh he met

no resistance just these cheers and again I want to get to has new information been revealed to the Russian people uh seeing a top former Russian Putin Ally called Putin Chef right they really grew up in their political career in Saint Petersburg together um attacking the whole Russian approach to Ukraine and talking about the unnecessary deaths of Russian soldiers well yes but then he's looking and

asking for more unnecessary death of of Russian soldiers because he's looking for a complete mobilization complete militarization he actually is uh uh is is accusing Putin accusing the Kremlin accusing minister of defense that uh that the war is not going uh worry enough it should be more war so this is all uh in many ways like Putin he is very um very skilled with with rhetoric

that is actually incredibly contradictory because he was asking to spill more Russian blood and one of the another thing about the cheers I wouldn't really over um uh overestimate the cheers yes and if we see uh we see pictures from Resto fondon for people it was more entertainment for people it was was uh the heroes of of the war in Ukraine uh going against other Heroes

of the war in Ukraine because the show always a hero and pretty version is here so it was more the sign of Russian absurdity and I don't know if you saw that uh the precautions one of the precaution tanks got stuck in a um in a gate that going into circus and it's like well that's kind of a symbol of what uh what Russia is all

about so that's I mean the cheering is is is the cheering of their more to the absurdity because the people I talked about talk to in Moscow they were saying well whatever Putin is my God this is the bunch of rapists and murderers we certainly don't want to be ruled like the uh ruled by people like those and so for for them uh you know the

worst Choice is still a better choice so Putin is the better choice for them we're talking to Nina christieva in Moscow