CNN
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In the end, the uprising was short-lived. But for a brief and chaotic 36 hours, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power appeared to be under serious threat, as thousands of Wagner fighters led by warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin closed in on the country’s capital.
With the private mercenary group claiming to have seized key military sites in two Russian cities, the Kremlin was forced to deploy heavily armed troops to the streets of Moscow and warn residents to stay indoors.
But the face-off never came.
On Saturday, the Kremlin said a deal had been reached to end the insurrection, with Prigozhin heading to neighboring Belarus and Wagner fighters turning back from their march.
Belarusian officials told CNN on Saturday they have no details on what Yevgeny Prigozhin’s status will be in the country and could not confirm whether Prigozhin had already arrived.
“Now is the moment when blood can be shed,” Prigozhin warned on Saturday. “Therefore, realizing all the responsibility for the fact that Russian blood will be shed from one of the sides, we turn our columns around and leave in the opposite direction to the field camps according to the plan.”
Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
Wagner fighters pull out of the headquarters of Russia's Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, on Saturday, after briefly occupying the strategic facility.
Wagner fighters will face no legal action, and the Kremlin has “always respected (Wagner’s) heroic deeds,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
“You will ask me what will happen to Prigozhin personally? The criminal case will be dropped against him. He himself will go to Belarus,” Peskov said, adding that the situation had been resolved “without further losses.”
Restrictions remained in place along a major highway Moscow and in the Tula region on Sunday, after Prigozhin’s attempted advance brought traffic to a grinding halt.
The abrupt about-face follows a rare, remarkable challenge to the Kremlin that threatened to plunge the country into crisis and destabilize its already stumbling war efforts in Ukraine.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a staunch Kremlin ally, condemned Prighozhin’s actions and said, “bloodshed could have happened.”
“The arrogance of one person could lead to such dangerous consequences and draw a large number of people into the conflict,” he added.
The threat of civil war leaves the country – and the Putin regime – in a very different place Sunday than it had been just two days prior. And with Russia possessing the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, that instability has other nations on edge, prompting emergency meetings and high-level talks.
Putin has built a reputation as an autocrat with an iron grip on power since he became president in 2000 – with his reign second in length only to Joseph Stalin, the Communist leader whose image Putin has tried to rehabilitate.
The mysterious deaths of Putin critics over the years, and more recent critics of the Ukraine war, has only bolstered the Kremlin’s veneer of total control and the consequences for those who step out of line.
That has now been shaken badly by the Wagner insurrection – with experts warning Putin may be more exposed than he has been in the last 23 years.
“Putin is clearly weakened. There is blood in the water,” said Evelyn Farkas, executive director of the US-based think tank McCain Institute. She added that this near-crisis could be seen as an opportunity for Putin critics or rivals within the Kremlin.
Ukraine’s national security adviser, Oleksii Danilov, said on Sunday that the short-lived Wagner uprising was the “first stage of dismantling” the Russian leader’s tenure.
“Putin’s regime has been stabbed in the back with a knife, if not instantly fatal, but certainly inevitable, although delayed in time,” he added. “The countdown has begun.”
At the same time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the developing situation in Russia saw “cracks emerge that weren’t there before,” adding: “We haven’t seen the last act yet.”
Blinken told CNN’s Dana Bash that the situation is “extraordinary,” but said it’s “too soon to tell where this is going to go.”
Some international observers have expressed surprise at what they view as a lackluster Russian response to the insurrection, with the lack of a rapid, cohesive strategy highlighting the military’s weakened capabilities.
Putin will also have to contend with shaky public sentiment within Russia. Civilian support for the war in Ukraine remains high, but cracks had begun to show by early this year, with some Russians tuning out the propaganda on air and others finding ways to circumvent Internet restrictions.
In the months since, the war has arrived on Russian soil as Ukraine launched its counteroffensive. Russia’s Belgorod region saw a cross-border attack by anti-Putin Russian nationals in May, while the Kremlin itself came under alleged drone attacks.
The emerging split between Moscow and some of its civilians was on clear display Saturday, as Prigozhin and his forces prepared to depart the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, where they had briefly occupied a key military facility. A video verified and geolocated by CNN show Prigozhin’s vehicle stopping as a resident approached to shake the Wagner boss’ hand; around them, residents cheer.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Navy Day Parade in St. Petersburg in July 2022.
Archivio GBB/Redux
A 6-year-old Putin poses for a picture with his mother, Maria Putina, in 1958. He was born on October 7, 1952, in St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad.
Russian Archives via ZUMA Press Wire
At age 13, Putin and other students pose for a class photo. He is seen in the first row, third from right.
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Putin grew up in a communal apartment shared by three families.
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Putin dances with a classmate during a party in St. Petersburg in 1970.
Russian Archives via ZUMA Press Wire
Putin, bottom, wrestles at school in St. Petersburg in 1971.
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Putin joined the KGB in 1975 and was first assigned to shadow foreign visitors.
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Putin poses for a photograph with his parents, Maria and Vladimir, in 1985. It was just before his departure to Germany, where he was assigned to counterintelligence duties.
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Putin turned toward politics in 1991 and became an adviser to one of his law school mentors, Anatoly Sobchak, who was running for mayor of St. Petersburg. The two are seen here during a ceremony in 1992.
Russian Archives via ZUMA Press Wire
Putin poses for a picture with his wife, Lyudmila, and daughters, Yekaterina and Maria. The couple married in 1983 and divorced in 2014.
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Russian President Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin prime minister in 1999. Here, Putin hand Yeltsin flowers during a farewell ceremony at the Kremlin in Moscow in December 1999. Amid a scandal Yeltsin had announced he was resigning immediately and that Putin would run the country as acting president until elections in March 2000.
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Putin sets a flower on a tomb during his inauguration ceremony in May 2000 at the Kremlin in Moscow. He was sworn in as Russia's second democratically elected president.
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Putin dances with a young girl in Kazan, Russia, while taking part in midsummer festivities in June 2000.
Reuters
Cuban leader Fidel Castro chats with Putin at the top of the steps of Havana's Palace of the Revolution during Putin's official welcoming ceremony in December 2000. Putin was on a four-day official visit to Cuba, the first by a Russian leader since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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Putin listens to a question during a joint press conference with US President George W. Bush at the White House in November 2001.
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President Bush welcomes Putin upon his arrival at Camp David in 2003.
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Putin rides a horse during a vacation in Southern Siberia in August 2009.
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Putin meets with a victim of a terrorist attack at a Moscow hospital in March 2010. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up on packed metro trains in Moscow, killing dozen of people.
Mikhail Metzel/AP
Putin judges an arm wrestling match while visiting the Seliger youth educational forum in Russia's Tver region in August 2011.
Ivan Sekretarev/AP
During a rally in Moscow, tears run down Putin's face after he was elected president for a third term in March 2012.
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Putin and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev clink glasses in the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow in June 2012 during a reception marking the patriotic Russia Day holiday to celebrate the country's 1990 declaration of independence from Soviet rule.
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Putin plays with his dogs Yume, left, and Buffy at his home in Novo-Ogaryovo, Russia, in March 2013.
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A topless demonstrator with a message on her back walks toward Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Hanover, Germany, in April 2013.
Dmitry Astakhov/ITAR-TASS/Landov
From left, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, Putin and Medvedev look at their watches before the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in February 2014. Russia hosted the Olympics that year.
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Putin shakes hands with Speaker of Crimean legislature Vladimir Konstantinov, second from left, and Sevastopol mayor Alexei Chalyi as Crimean Premier Sergei Aksyonov looks on in March 2014. Putin had just signed a treaty to incorporate Crimea into Russia.
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Putin is seen through a video camera's viewfinder as he speaks during his annual news conference in Moscow in December 2014.
Mykola Lazarenko/AP
From left, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin, Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko gather in Minsk, Belarus, in February 2015. Leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany were gathering for crucial talks in the hope of negotiating an end to the fighting between Russia-backed separatists and government forces in eastern Ukraine.
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US President Barack Obama and Putin toast during a luncheon hosted by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the 70th annual UN General Assembly in 2015.
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Putin pays his respects to slain Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov during the funeral ceremony at the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow in December 2016. Karlov was assassinated in Turkey by an off-duty policeman.
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Putin hands US President Donald Trump a World Cup football during a joint press conference after their 2018 summit in Helsinki, Finland. The two leaders met one-on-one and discussed a range of issues, including the 2016 US election.
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Putin and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attend the G20 summit in Buenos Aires in November 2018.
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French President Emmanuel Macron, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin meet in Paris in December 2019.
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A security officer asks the media to step back at the start of a summit between US President Joe Biden and Putin in June 2021. Seated from left are US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden, Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The summit, held in Geneva, Switzerland, was the first meeting of Biden and Putin since Biden was elected president.
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Putin meets with Macron in Moscow in February 2022. Macron was hoping to de-escalate the tense standoff between Russia and Ukraine. At the time, Putin had assembled 70% of the military personnel and weapons it would need for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, based on US intelligence estimates.
Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times/Redux
A family that left eastern Ukraine watches Putin's televised address from a hotel room in Taganrog, Russia, in February 2022. In lengthy remarks, Putin blasted Kyiv's growing security ties with the West and appeared to cast doubt on Ukraine's right to self-determination. He would soon order troops into separatist-held parts of eastern Ukraine.
Russian pool via AP
In this image taken from video, Putin pays his respects near the coffin of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow in September 2022.
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Putin meets with the Moscow-appointed heads of four Ukrainian regions, partially occupied by Russia, at the Grand Kremlin Palace in September 2022. In defiance of international law, Putin announced Russia would annex four Ukrainian regions as Russian territory: Luhansk and Donetsk — home to two Russian-backed breakaway republics where fighting has been ongoing since 2014 — as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, two areas in southern Ukraine that have been occupied by Russian forces since shortly after the invasion began.
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Putin is seen on a screen as he addresses a rally and concert in Moscow marking the annexation of the four regions of Ukraine in September 2022.
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Putin speaks with his Belarus counterpart Alexander Lukashenko during a meeting at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg in December 2022.
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Putin sees off Chinese President Xi Jinping after a reception following their talks at the Kremlin in Moscow in March 2023.
Pavel Bednyakov/Sputnik via AP
Putin is seen on monitors as he addresses the nation after Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of private mercenary group Wagner, called for an armed rebellion in June 2023. Putin vowed to punish those behind the "armed uprising." Later the Belarusian government claimed President Alexander Lukashenko had
reached a deal with Prigozhin to halt the advance. The Kremlin said criminal charges against Prigozhin will be dropped and he will be sent to neighboring Belarus.
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, and Putin visit the construction site of a rocket launch complex in Tsiolkovsky, Russia, in September 2023.
Kim and Putin met at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, in Russia's far east, as both countries face international isolation over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. Putin has said Russia is considering and discussing some military cooperation with North Korea.
Tucker Carlson Network/Zuma Press
Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
Putin speaks at a press conference after partial election results indicated he would
win another term in March 2024, extending his rule until at least 2030. With most opposition candidates either dead, jailed, exiled or barred from running -- and with dissent effectively outlawed in Russia since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 -- Putin faced no credible challenge to his presidency.
Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
Vladimir Putin walks to take his
oath as Russian president during an inauguration ceremony in the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Russia, on May 7, 2024.
The location adds to the moment’s significance: Rostov-on-Don is an important regional capital with logistical and strategic value, housing the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District. Chechen forces were retreating from the territory on Sunday, Russian state media TASS reported, having been deployed to quell the Wagner insurrection.
Further north, the governor of Voronezh said on Sunday Wagner units were departing “steadily and without incident,” after traveling through the region in their advance towards Moscow. They also withdrew from nearby Lipetsk, according to the regional government.
“All of this is spilling out into the Russian heartland,” said retired US Army Brig. Gen. Peter Zwack on Saturday.
Beth Sanner, former deputy director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration, said the incident could see Putin “double down on repression in Russia” in a bid to wrest back control – as well as step up its fighting in Ukraine, in the face of international scrutiny.
“He has been humiliated,” Sanner said. “He’s going to try to reassert (his strength) … Putin will not just stand there and allow all of this to flourish and blossom.”
The insurrection has also turned a spotlight to Russia’s nuclear capabilities and what might push Putin to use them – questions that have loomed over the war in Ukraine ever since it began.
Putin has repeatedly engaged in nuclear saber-rattling, announcing earlier this year that it would store tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, one of Moscow’s closest allies, which helped launch the initial invasion of Ukraine. The first of those weapons arrived this month.
On Saturday, two US officials told CNN that they had not seen any change to Russia’s nuclear posture since the insurrection started.
A State Department spokesperson added that the US has “no reason to adjust our conventional or nuclear force posture,” and that it has “long-standing, established communication channels with Russia on nuclear issues.”
But those channels are now significantly narrower than before. Earlier this year, Russia suspended participation in its only nuclear arms control treaty with the US – meaning the two nations are no longer required to share information like the location of certain missiles and launchers.
US intelligence officials had anticipated last year that there was an internal power struggle between the Wagner group and the Russian government, as the invasion of Ukraine stalled, according to top US officials.
They even saw signs that Prigozhin was making preparations for a major challenge, including by amassing weapons and ammunition, said one Western intelligence official and another person familiar with the intelligence.
But they didn’t anticipate Prigozhin would storm the Rostov region – and the insurrection unfolded so quickly that it caught US and European officials off guard, sources say.
US officials convened emergency meetings on Friday night to assess the events, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with counterparts from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and the European Union on Saturday.
The leader of the US, United Kingdom, France and Germany also spoke on Saturday, before Wagner pulled back from its advance, according to Downing Street.
Countries near Russia are also on guard, with the president of former Soviet state Kazakhstan scheduling an emergency meeting of his Security Council on Sunday. The council will form a plan to contain any “possible negative consequences” of the insurrection that could impact Kazakh citizens or the economy, said the presidential office.
Meanwhile, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Andrey Rudenko and top Chinese diplomats discussed the upheaval in Russia during their meeting in Beijing on Sunday, according to a statement from Russia’s foreign ministry.