The resonance from the June 24 mutiny attempted by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss of the notorious Wagner group, remains strong, despite the attempts by President Vladimir Putin to demonstrate a swift restoration of stability in Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his meeting with African leaders on June 17, 2023 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Photo: Getty Images.
Questions about the drivers, participants and consequences of the Wagner Group mutiny on June 23 and 24 are set to remain unanswered as the Russian leadership finds it necessary to close that shocking page.
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives to his meeting with officers of Russian army and secret services who prevented an invasion of the Wagner Group to the Russian capital, on June 27, 2023 in Moscow, Russia. Photo: Getty Images
The weekend mutiny of the Wagner Group, pathetic as it may look in hindsight, is certain to affect Russia’s ability to sustain its aggression against Ukraine and to repel the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive.
But it will also resonate in a much wider sense.
Vladimir Putin and Algerian President Abdelmajud Tebboune during the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg in June 2023. Photo: Getty Images Europe
Earlier this week, my partner bought some rainbow-coloured yarn. While we queued at the till, a mother in front of us pointed at our yarn and said to her child: Look! Just like you! A small voice addressing an enormous issue.
Being queer feels different this year and I’ll explain why.
Oslo 2022. Photo: Marit Moe-Pryce / PRIO
The summer economic forum in St. Petersburg used to be a vanity fair of Russian opulence and corruption. But last week’s modest, if not frugal, event was rather an exercise in self-reassurance of sustainable stagnation.
St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. 2023. Photo: Alexey Kudenko, RIA Novosti / kremlin.ru
The protracted deadlock in the trenches of the war in Ukraine is giving way to high-intensity battles, and this escalation instantly generates widespread international resonance, in which expectations of a Ukrainian victory are mixed with concerns about a Russian defeat.
Photo: Lau Svensson / Wikimedia Commons
Now, the initiative is clearly with the Ukrainian forces, which, from June 5, started a series of probing attacks along the 600-mile frontline, insisting on complete information silence about their scope and outcome (Novayagazeta.eu, June 8).Read More
Sun Tzu, the great Chinese military philosopher, was rarely studied in Soviet military academies, but the Ukrainian high command — seeking to “win first and start fighting after” — appears to be taking a page out of his treatise, The Art of War.
Every day, a new tactical strike is delivered where it is the least expected. Russian policemen by a damaged residential building following a reported drone attack in Moscow May 30, 2023. Photo: EPA/YURI KOCHETKOV
Naturally, the intentions for a spring offensive have now become a plan for a summer offensive; even so, the time in between was not wasted.
The noise of jingoist propaganda and anti-Western hysteria emanating from Moscow is not as monotonous as it often seems, and the variations expose significant differences between and within Russian elite groups.
Vladimir Putin. On the left, Russian Security Council Secretary, Nikolai Patrushev. Photo: Russian Presidential Press and Information Office
Recent military setbacks, such as the destruction of a mixed air group over the Bryansk region on May 13 and the incursion of a Russian paramilitary group into the Belgorod region on May 22, have amplified these variations, as the official versions have departed exceedingly from reality (Nezavisimaya gazeta, May 23).
Russian President Vladimir Putin is stuck with the pseudo-historical denials of Ukraine’s existence as an independent state and reassurances that the “special military operation” is going according to plan. Thus, others endeavor to advance effectual war discourses (Novayagazeta.eu, May 26).Read More
From May 19 to 21, Japan hosted the most recent meeting of the seven heads of state (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) as well as the European Union in the so-called G7 format.
Ukraine President Zelenskyy and European Council President Charles Michel at the 2023 G7 summit. Photo: European Council
Overall, the key point on the agenda was certainly strengthening the unity of democratic states in the vast Indo-Pacific region to counter growing coercion from China.
The new momentum in upgrading this unity has, however, generated the need to confront the common threat produced by Russia’s war against Ukraine, which is coming to a pivotal juncture.
The Victory Day celebrated on May 9 is a hugely important and emotionally loaded holiday for the majority of Russians and Ukrainians, Kazakhs and Uzbeks, whose grandfathers fought together and defeated Nazi Germany back in 1945.
2023 Victory Day parade in Moscow. Photo: Ministry of Defense of Russia
In Russia, this solemn Remembrance Day was gradually converted by all-pervasive propaganda into a manifestation of militarism and aggressive ambition.