Putin appeared on camera on Monday, defiantly warning that he would have had no trouble suppressing the uprising had the Wagner Group leader not chosen to halt his march on Moscow in a deal that ostensibly will see him exiled to Belarus.īut there was widespread agreement outside Russia that the showdown represented the most serious challenge to Putin’s grip on power during his generation in control and could even be a crack that spells the beginning of the end of his authority.

Western support has not only enabled Ukraine to fight back against invading forces, it has helped turn the war into a quagmire that spiked political pressure on Putin and created battlefield conditions that likely helped lead to mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s revolt over the weekend. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, led him instead to reinvigorate the NATO alliance with an extraordinary pipeline of arms and ammunition designed to ensure the country’s survival. But even he tried to break the chill, by meeting his counterpart at a summit in Geneva in 2021. US gathered detailed intelligence on Wagner chief's rebellion plans but kept it secret from most alliesīiden, who came of age in Washington as a senator during some of the most embittered years of the US-Soviet standoff in the 1970s and 1980s, had fewer illusions about Putin than most. Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin leaves the headquarters of the Southern Military District amid the group's pullout from the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on June 24.

Turnitin cornell login