June 23rd, 2023, has become a historical date of massive proportion. If you paid any attention to any media outlets, there would have been massive headlines about the 'armed rebellion' of Prigozhin and the Wagner private military company. True, this really was an event of massive significance, but was it really a 'rebellion, and if not, then what was it? In order to properly unpack the significance of the misinformation at play and debunk this narrative, it's important to understand terminology and the significance of the terminology. According to the dictionary, a rebellion is stated to be an open, armed, and usually unsuccessful revolt against a government or bodily authority; by this measure, this isn't what the P.M.C. ended up doing.
Prigozhin had little to no real fighting and didn't have any desire to revolt or be defiant against the Russian government or Putin himself, for that matter. His intentions were actually nationalistic; he believed Putin to be holding back out of fear of NATO intervention. Putin and the ministry of defense had ordered a partial mobilization. This was a severe miscalculation, and Putin underestimated the level of resistance and was forced to withdraw from the now-dubbed Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2022.
This realization pushed him to implement waves of mobilization, but he still refused full mobilization for the stated reason above to this day, despite everything that has transpired. This factor, combined with Wagner's initial refusal to be absorbed into the Russian Army, sparked the inevitable back and forth between the Wagner group and the ministry of defense. Furthermore, their intentions were never to undermine, revolutionize, or use any of the other motives associated with insurrection, insurgency, uprising, or rebellions; as such, a classical definition of protest or mutiny can be used to fit the actions of the P.M.C. Wagner group.
Why is this important? Because of the misinformation and the way it looks, it's not the same as a peaceful protest in essence of being non-violent, even though the Wagners were largely non-violent. The use of military equipment during their victory march protest or mutiny looks more sinister, but this is easily overlooked because of their hero status, for which people in Russia absolutely love them. The effect of a mutiny against a head of authority—in this case, the ministry of defense, whom Putin himself has backed during previous PR stunts from the Wagner group before this mutiny—has done nothing but undermine both the Russian military as a whole and Putin himself. Putin regards it as a betrayal.
There's an infamous quote from Putin himself where, in response to a reporter asking about betrayal, he says, in essence, that he can never forgive betrayal. For Putin, officially, there has to be a peaceful resolution, thanks in large part to Wagner's hero status among the Russian people. Unoffically, Putin has no connection to a burning plane with both heads of the Wagner group, and as such, this mutiny does have historic significance and consequences. It's proof of how much power Putin holds onto within his country, although as many other examples can be washed off as having no connection and claimed as a conspiracy theory, it only proves how powerful Putin is if you wish to believe this was no mere coincidence, but ultimately, no, the regime isn't close to collapsing, it's not unstable, and there was no armed revolution or rebellion to prove this; if anything, it proves the current narrative is but the opposite of the truth.
You must be logged in to post a comment.