The Daily - A 36-Hour Rebellion in Russia

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

An armed rebellion in Russia over the weekend stunned the world and amounted to the single biggest challenge to President Vladimir V. Putin’s rule since he came to power 23 years ago.Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times, talks about the man who led the revolt, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, and about what might happen next.Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: How the rebellion in Russia unfolded.The mutiny raised a searing question: Could Mr. Putin lose power?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. An armed rebellion in Russia over the weekend stunned the world and amounted to the single biggest challenge to Vladimir Putin's rule since he came to power 23 years ago. to Vladimir Putin's rule since he came to power 23 years ago. Today, my colleague Anton Trinovsky on the man who led the revolt and what his brief but bold rebellion tells us about the future of political power in Russia. It's Monday, June 26th. So Anton, I think it's safe to say that we witnessed something extraordinary in Russia over the weekend. And the first thing I wanted to do was to call you and ask you what was going on, what it was that we were witnessing. Yes. I mean, what has transpired in Russia over

the last 72 hours really is an incredibly extraordinary event that all of us will be interpreting, deciphering for weeks, months, maybe years to come. It was an armed rebellion from all we can tell. It was a leader of a mercenary force. His name is Yevgeny Prigozhin, marching columns of thousands of fighters armed with tanks, with artillery, with anti-aircraft batteries into Russia. And it raised the specter of Russians fighting Russians, of civil war. It was really just breathtaking. I mean, the whole weekend, all Russia nerds I know, including my own husband, were just texting with Russian friends, just kind of gobsmacked at how this could actually be happening. But let's take this just bit by bit.

Why don't you first tell us, Anton, who is this guy, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and remind us where he started, how he got to be where he was. He is a very murky figure with a criminal past. He is a very murky figure with a criminal past. He was born in the Soviet Union in 1961 in the city that was then known as Leningrad, now called St. Petersburg. He spent 10 years in a Soviet prison for robbery and other crimes. He then got out and in the 1990s became a businessman. He opened a hot dog stand, eventually other restaurants, convenience stores. Around the year 2000, so that was Putin's first year as president, that is when he says he first met Vladimir Putin.

His story goes that he catered a meal for Putin and the Japanese prime minister. He somehow won Putin's trust and became a kind of unofficial problem solver for Putin, a sort of fixer operating in the shadows whose loyalty was to Putin above all. He became very rich. He got enormous government contracts in catering, in construction, and he really was one of these classic figures of the Putin era who really owed their success to their connections to Putin.

And remind us, how exactly is Prigozhin serving Putin? Well, probably the most important way in which Prigozhin kind of quietly serves Putin out of the public eye is by forming this mercenary fighting group called Wagner, essentially a private army that's not part of the Russian military. And why, Anton, would Putin need that? I mean, you know, he controls this massive Russian army, right? Like, why a private one? So remember, Putin, as a former KGB agent, seems very comfortable operating outside the public eye. And Prigozhin's private army gave the Russian government and the Kremlin the ability to have operations carried out on its behalf from which Putin and Russian officials could remain at arm's length.

So an early example of that was 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea and fomented a separatist war in eastern Ukraine. We saw Wagner troops join the fight on the Russian side there. We saw it again later on after Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015, the Wagner forces provided those Russian boots on the ground. And we saw it in Africa in recent years, places like the Central African Republic, where Wagner forces have been providing security for various governments while also helping the Kremlin expand its influence across the continent.

So kind of secret militia forces engaging really in major global conflicts. Absolutely. Up until the war in Ukraine, Prigozhin operated almost completely in the shadows. In fact, he didn't even acknowledge that he was the guy behind the Wagner group. Prigozhin, you know, almost never appeared in public, never gave interviews. We saw very, very little of him. Then Putin invades Ukraine in February of 2022. It goes very badly, right? Putin expected Ukraine to fall within days or weeks. Instead, Ukraine put up this tremendous resistance that the Russian regular military was simply not able to handle. And that was when Wagner got involved. And not only did Prigozhin send his highly trained and experienced mercenary forces into Ukraine,

into Ukraine. He also starts this incredible recruitment drive in Russian prisons that must have clearly been blessed by Putin himself. There's this video that gets leaked on to the Telegram messaging app last fall where we see Prigozhin standing in a prison courtyard in Russia, surrounded by a circle of prisoners,

and you can hear him laying out the terms of his recruitment. Which is basically, you come fight for us for six months, if you try to do something bad, we shoot you. If you survive, you have your freedom. Which was kind of remarkable at the time, I remember, Anton, because this was kind of the first time we'd ever really seen the guy in action in his mercenary role, right? Exactly, Yeah. And this became the beginning of Prigozhin going from this man who operated

purely in the shadows to increasingly a public figure. And how important is this Wagner fighting force to the overall Russian war effort? Well, very important. You know, numerically, they're smaller, but we're still talking about tens of thousands of fighters, certainly with those prisoners who were recruited. The Wagner group is more agile, more flexible, maybe even in some ways more skilled than the Russian military. They were critical, for instance, in the battle for Bakhmut, that city in eastern Ukraine that it took the Russians months to capture. They finally did capture it in May. But something that happened as the war went along is that Prigozhin increasingly started

marketing his Wagner forces as a separate entity. There's a public relations aspect to this, where Prigozhin, he's on social media almost every day. Releasing voice messages, videos, where he talks about what's happening on the ground in a totally different kind of language than what we hear from the official spokespeople for the Russian military. for the Russian military. He's much more honest about the fact that this is a war,

that people are dying. There are videos where he's actually showing the corpses of Russians killed in the fighting. And then... And then... He starts going on the attack against the Russian military brass. And now listen to me, you son of a bitch! These are someone's fucking fathers! And someone's sons! He uses incredibly harsh, profane language to denigrate the leadership of the Russian military.

Almost every day for the last few months, Prigozhin has been saying that Russia's top generals, their defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the head of the general staff, General Valery Gerasimov, he's been saying that they're incompetent, that they're indifferent to their soldiers' lives. He has said that Shoigu should be tried for treason. I mean, really wild, intense stuff.

And obviously, we're all watching this just in shock as to how someone can keep saying these things about the Russian military and not be punished for it in some way, given how harshly Putin has been cracking down on so many other people who have criticized the military over the last 16 months. So what's the answer? Like, what does Putin actually think? Is he backing him? Well, Putin said nothing. And frankly, the only possible explanation is that Putin personally is protecting Prigozhin. Putin probably felt that Prigozhin was necessary for the Russian war effort to proceed. So that emboldened Prigozhin and he kept on pushing and pushing and really escalating that criticism

in a remarkable way. But then earlier this month, something important happened, which is that the Russian authorities ordered that all volunteers and mercenaries fighting for the Russian side in Ukraine needed to sign contracts with the regular military. It was really a moment where it looked like the Russian government was finally going to dismantle Wagner as an independent force. So is this Putin turning away from Prokhorin? It was kind of the closest we saw Putin come to that because Putin publicly

backed that order. And if this order were to be carried out, Prigozhin would lose command of his huge fighting force. And Prigozhin's frustration with all of this seemed to come to a head on Friday when he released a remarkable 30-minute video where he went above and beyond all of his criticism of the Russian authorities thus far. He not only went after the generals, as he often does, he went after the fundamental justification that Putin laid out for the invasion of Ukraine. Extraordinary. Yeah. So Prigozhin says in this video that Ukraine did not actually pose a threat to Russia when Russia invaded in 2022. He describes the war as a, quote, racket that military officials and elites are using just to profit. And, you know, he doesn't actually mention Putin by name,

but it's sort of by far the most confrontational video from him that we saw. and he won't take the gun in his hands. Time is rapidly collapsing. You could see, you know, on social media, even among, like, bloggers who supported the war, they were saying, wow, this is a bit intense, but here's a guy who's kind of

finally saying things that should be said, you know, and I think it also showed us how Prigozhin was trying to turn himself into a politician, into a populist politician, kind of saying these things that officially are not being said. So then what happens after this shocking video? So this is when things get really crazy. things get really crazy. About six hours later, he claims that the Russian military fired at the encampments of his Wagner soldiers and killed huge numbers of Wagner soldiers.

And was that true, Anton? We don't have any independent evidence that it was true. But whatever the case, any independent evidence that it was true. But whatever the case, he says on Friday night that we're going to retaliate and there's 25,000 of us. And then shortly after that, we start seeing images of military equipment on the streets of Rostov, a city of a million people near the border with Ukraine that is a base for Wagner. So it starts to become clear that an armed rebellion is underway. We'll be right back. So Anton, by Saturday morning, things had really deteriorated.

Walk us through what happened next. Saturday morning is when we see that this rebellion is for real. An armed rebellion is apparently underway in Russia. In the Russian city of Rostov, armed men and armor on the streets. The Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is saying that his group actually took control of the military headquarters in Rostov. Prigozhin's troops roll into the city of Rostov-on-Don, the southern military headquarters, which is the nerve center for the invasion. And he says they did that, and I'm quoting him now, without firing a shot.

It's just this remarkable moment because some kind of non-official armed force has taken control of a major Russian city. Okay, so remarkable. Like, he has control of this Russian city, as it appears, and of the Russian military headquarters for Ukraine. What happens next? So Prigozhin releases a video

where he's sitting and negotiating with two very senior generals. Prigozhin says that until his forces get access to Pshoygu and Gerasimov, we'll block the city of Rostov and go to Moscow. He says we'll block the city of Rostov and we'll go to Moscow. And that's what happens. There are significant reports now that columns, hundreds of vehicles potentially, are moving north, halfway to Moscow. His forces march toward Moscow in these long columns going along a major highway. We don't know how big this column of vehicles is.

The capsule is bracing itself for repercussions of Wagner's advance towards Moscow. If they get there, unclear, but their progress is reasonably fast. Meanwhile, what's the Russian military doing? They seem to completely be at a loss. So they didn't fight back when Prigozhin's forces took over that key military facility in Rostov. There are a few cases where it looks like the Russian military does try to attack that column of Wagner forces, but they fire back. And there were several helicopters that we believe were shot down by Wagner forces. Otherwise, it seems like the Russian authorities just don't know what to do. There are a lot of images coming in at this point of the Russian military trying to set up some kind of defense of Moscow.

Local governors, the mayor of Moscow, were urging people to stay off the streets. There were various pro-Kremlin public figures on social media warning of the risk of civil war. So there were just all these jitters. And where was Putin in all of this, Anton? What was he saying? Was he saying anything? So he didn't say anything Friday night as this rebellion started to unfold.

He finally spoke up in a five-minute speech at around 10 a.m. Moscow time on Saturday. You know, he tried to look determined, but he also clearly looked rattled. He never said Prigozhin's name in that speech, but he called him a traitor. He was saying that Prigozhin was stabbing his country in the back

just as it was fighting this war in Ukraine. Putin warned of anarchy and fratricide and promised tough actions to stop this rebellion. So Putin taking a clear hard line against Prigozhin. So if there was ever any confusion about whether he was backing him, at this point, he is not. Right. At this point, that confusion is over. So the situation seems to be escalating.

There are reports of isolated firefights, more helicopters, even planes being shot down by the Wagner forces. And there's a point where they get to just over 100 miles from Moscow. We're talking a two-hour drive. Crazy. So at this point, we're thinking, what will happen when they actually get to the outskirts of Moscow? Will there be large-scale fighting that breaks out? Will they be able toscale fighting that breaks out? Will they

be able to enter the Russian capital? And then finally, at around 10 p.m. Moscow time, so just about 24 hours into this whole thing, there's a breakthrough. And we get word that there's been some kind of deal struck where Prigozhin agrees to turn his military columns around, call off the march on Moscow, and in exchange get some kind of immunity. Okay, needle off the record. Like, what happened? What was the deal?

Well, there's obviously a lot here that we simply don't know. But what the Kremlin did say publicly was that Prigozhin was going to have the criminal investigation against him dropped. He was going to be able to go to Belarus and the fighters who rebelled alongside Prigozhin were not going to be prosecuted. And is that it?

I mean, does the Wagner group still exist? Very much unclear. I have a hard time believing that it's just going to go away. But at the end of the night, Saturday night, we saw them withdraw from Rostov. We saw footage of Prigozhin leaving the Rostov military headquarters. So really, in a span of just over 24 hours, this insurrection goes from start to this strange conclusion. conclusion. So Anton, help me make sense of this. I mean, what is it that we just witnessed?

Would you actually call it a coup? I'm not sure that it was a coup because Prigozhin never said that he actually wanted Putin out of office. In fact, it really looked like he was hoping to make some kind of deal with Putin. But this was an incredibly dramatic and dangerous threat to Putin's power. You had one group of fighters taking control of key facilities in the city of Rostov-on-Don. You had another column of fighters making that long drive to Moscow. It was the first time that you had such a large, powerful armed force training its guns at Putin's army. Well, Anton, to that point, what did we just learn about Putin and his power? What did this weekend show us? It shows us how incredibly unstable and vulnerable the system that Putin built has turned out to be. Putin's power does not rest on institutions like parliament or

the justice system or even the police. It's all about these personal informal ties that he has built with people in his inner circle and the elite. And he has thrived for many years by figuring out how to manage all those informal ties in a way that people's loyalties go to him and he can kind of stay in control of this chaotic system. What happened this past weekend was that that chaos finally got the better of Putin. All of a sudden, one of these key players in that constellation of informal power centers got out of Putin's control. Like Frankenstein's monster, right? Putin created the monster,

Prokofiev, and that monster ended up coming after his creator. Well, yeah. You know, the problem, obviously, with this kind of system that is all dependent upon informal ties and personalities rather than institutions is that it becomes vulnerable to the whims of the various individuals involved. Especially, as we've also seen, when you have a war that increases the stresses on the system by many, many times, things become very unpredictable. And that's what happened here. This, of course, doesn't mean that Putin is going to collapse overnight, but this type of scenario is one that very few people

were able to lucidly envision. And all of a sudden, we see that actually it is possible to lead an armed uprising in Putin's Russia. And that creates all kinds of questions as to how Putin is able to maintain legitimacy and maintain control in the months and years to come. Anton, thank you. Thank you, Sabrina. On Monday, Progozhin surfaced in the form of an audio message, but did not reveal his location.

He said that the goal of his march was not to overthrow the government, but to, quote, prevent the destruction of the Wagner force and to bring military leaders to justice. He said his fighters turned around when it became clear that going further would mean that blood would be shed. He boasted that his march presented a master class on what the Russian invasion of Ukraine should have looked like. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you should know today. On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration had the power to set its own priorities for which undocumented immigrants to arrest and which to leave alone, rejecting a challenge from two conservative states which had pressed for more aggressive enforcement. which had pressed for more aggressive enforcement. The 8-1 ruling was a major victory for the Biden administration, which has sought to balance control of the southern border with humane treatment of immigrants. The court ruled that the states that brought the case, Texas and Louisiana, did not have standing to sue, signaling a skepticism to further legal challenges by states to immigration measures, which are traditionally the domain of the federal government. Today's episode was produced by Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, and Will Reed. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn and Patricia Willans,

with help from Lisa Chow. Contains translations by Anastasia Varashova and original music by Alicia Beitube, Marian Lozano, and Dan Powell. And it was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.