Russian President Vladimir Putin may have survived the mutiny launched by his former protege, Yevgeny Prigozhin, but the Wagner Group leader’s attempt to topple Russia’s military leadership raises serious questions about Putin’s ability ultimately to survive in power.
Read more: Putin's private army threatens his survival
For more than 24 hours after Prigozhin announced the dramatic news that his forces were marching on Moscow, the Russian leader effectively disappeared from view, prompting rumours that he had fled from Moscow to secure his own safety.
Even though it now appears the rumours were false, with Kremlin officials insisting that Putin had remained in the capital throughout what proved to be a short-lived crisis, the fact that the Russian leader, in effect, went missing in action during the gravest crisis his presidency has faced during his 23 years in power has hardly helped to reassure the Russian people that their leader is capable of providing the strong leadership they crave.
Indeed, the fact that Putin was forced to back down from his original claim that Prigozhin was a traitor, and should be treated as such, suggested the very opposite — that Putin is desperately seeking to reassert his authority.
A full-scale civil war between the official Russian military and Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries was only averted after the intervention of Aleksandr Lukashenko, the president of neighbouring Belarus, who managed to defuse the situation by offering Prigozhin and his fighters the opportunity to go into exile in his country.
Putin attempts to portray business-as-usual image
Having overcome the gravest crisis he has faced since becoming president, Putin has attempted to portray a business-as-usual image following his public reappearance, one where the security of the Russian state was never seriously placed in jeopardy.
