Putin tries to regain lost leadership as doubts grow about possible internal betrayals

MADRID, 29 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Russian President Vladimir Putin began a process on Saturday to recover the image of a strong leader lost to the beat of the Wagner Group revolt, the biggest political challenge suffered by the president since coming to power, while the growing doubts about the degree of penetration that the mutiny of the oligarch Yevgeni Prigozhin could have had in Moscow, also in the circle closest to the Kremlin.

Prigozhin's troops headed for Moscow over the weekend - they even took the city of Rostov without opposition - to perpetrate a rebellion that Putin managed to stop by promising the exile of his former ally to Belarus and the withdrawal of any possible charges. Wagner's leader reappeared on Monday to clarify that he did not want to overthrow the government, but the truth is that the hitherto untouchable president has been damaged.

In recent days, Putin has tried to present himself as the leader Russia needs, publicly praising the military for avoiding what could have been "a civil war." Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also remains in his post, whom Prighozin has been targeting for months for his alleged mismanagement of the military offensive in Ukraine.

The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has acknowledged errors in the management of this crisis, mainly for not having stopped it before it occurred, but in Moscow they have avoided self-criticism and have not given details of the political scope of a rebellion that for now Putin has circumscribed the Wagner Group, a network of mercenaries that has been key on the Ukrainian front.

However, US intelligence sources cited by 'The New York Times' have pointed out that General Sergei Surovikin, who commanded the offensive in Ukraine between October and January, was aware of it. Prigozhin has applauded the work of Surovikin on several occasions, who was replaced earlier this year by Valeri Gerasimov, another of the declared enemies of the Wagner leader along with Shoigu.

Surovikin has not been seen in public again and sources quoted by the newspaper 'The Moscow Times' even point out that he has been arrested, an issue on which the Russian government has not ruled or any other foreign authority that could have verified this arrest by their own means.

Another of the doubts still to be clarified is how far Prighozin was willing to go or what the real objectives of his mutiny were. According to 'The Wall Street Journal', the head of the Wagner Group came to plan the capture of the Russian military leadership and accelerated his plans after verifying that the Intelligence services were aware of the preparations for the revolt.

Wagner's leader, meanwhile, remains silent in Belarus, the country he supposedly arrived on Tuesday and from which he must now reconfigure the future of an organization of mercenaries with ramifications also in Africa. The riot at least has served for Putin himself to recognize for the first time that the company had received money from the Russian public coffers - more than 86,260 million rubles, about 921 million euros in exchange.