This week, for the first time ever in the five-year history of this blog, we’ve asked our Russian writer Sergey to go solo.
In a week when an extraordinary mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, threatened to march into Moscow, we wondered what that experience was like for Sergey, who lives in the south of the capital.
For 24 nerve-jangling hours, Russia appeared to stay silent and inactive, waiting to see which way the wind would blow. Obviously, Dean and Roger would have no idea what that experience was like, so that’s why we asked Sergey to write his feelings about this astonishing episode…..
When the Wagner Group was about to take Moscow by storm…
As Roger put it: Most of us Brits and Yanks, thankfully, have never had to worry about the stuff you have in the past year… We decided that as I am the lucky bastard with war and military coup experience at home, I would this week deliver solo writing.
I was shocked on February 24, 2022. Something unthinkable happened. My fears and outrage about Putin’s mad decision withstood the reality check. He successfully drags Russia to a national catastrophe. Some experts that I listen to have been saying that, politically, a coup is possible as the military situation for Putin’s Russia is worsening, and there’s no now chance of turning it back.
And here we come to recent Wagner’s effort. It is one thing when some political expert speaks his mind games. It is different when you read Telegram channels saying that Wagner units left Rostov-on-Don yesterday night and were slowly but surely, approaching Moscow with ruling circles panicking. Rumours spread that business jets were taking off from Moscow airports one by one…
It was a bit scary as I live south of Moscow, just in the direction Wagner was approaching. Some like I had back in 1991 with the failed Communist coup. I suspected there would be no happy end this time as both sides were bad guys. You decide who is worse, Putin or Prigozhin. As the Russian proverb says, it is a toad vs a viper. There were rumors that the Wagner Group could have taken some southern Moscow districts to make it a stronghold to negotiate with Putin, using civilians as shields. My family and I live in the South. Wagner militants were peacefully chatting with the people of Rostov-on-Don, trying to establish themselves as protectors. However, they could have needed Moscovites as hostages.
I believe Evgeny Prigozhin had no intent to kill Putin or make him resign somehow. He wanted to take down Sergey Shoigu, the Defense Minister – and prove himself as Putin’s loyal man, but under his own conditions. The funny thing was that, according to the flightghtradar24.com, Putin’s plane flew from Moscow to St. Petersberg that day. He ran away. One more piece of evidence that the guy is, let’s say it politely, not a man of big personal courage.
No ordinary citizens cared to defend Putin, in Moscow or elsewhere; it is a true sign of his public support. It was not the 1991 situation when the people of Moscow (and Leningrad) went out on the streets to support Gorbachev and Yeltsin. I was sixteen back then – and I was one of them.
I am responsibly saying that even if some deal was struck to let Wagner get away, Putin’s state in Russia is dead. There’s always a silver lining: before the war and the coup, I could have imagined Putin staying in power till he died. Maybe in 2050.
I doubt I will see him as Russia’s ruler in a couple of years. Again, as we in Russia say: he is a shot-down pilot.