The Kremlin statement that Vladimir Putin met Yevgeny Prigozhin five days after the Wagner founder thumbed his nose at the Russian president's authority conceals as much as it reveals about his mutiny and its aftermath.
On June 24, Prigozhin's mercenaries seized military facilities in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don before advancing on Moscow with a view to overturn Russia's military establishment.
Prigozhin called off the rebellion after negotiations reportedly involving Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and an agreement to go into exile in Belarus.
Wagner Group fighters look on from a military vehicle in Rostov-on-Don on June 24, 2023. Yevgeny Prigozhin called off his rebellion after agreeing to go into exile in Belarus.ROMAN ROMOKHOV/GETTY IMAGES
That supposed mea culpa meeting at the Kremlin took place on the same day that Peskov had previously claimed he did not know where Prigozhin was. But the whereabouts of the former convict turned businessman remains unknown, as does what was behind what looked like the biggest challenge to Putin's 23-year presidency.
"The entire Prigozhin affair, even before the mutiny, struck me as a kind of a burlesque, staged by Putin and his close advisers for Western consumption," said Alexei Pavlenko, associate professor of Russian at Colorado College.
"The purpose of this farce was to confuse the Western analysts and military experts and then gloat over their predictable predictions of Putin's impending demise," he told Newsweek. "The objective of this setup was both to keep the official army generals on their toes and to plant confusion into the adversaries' intelligence."
Criticism in Russia of the war in Ukraine, officially called a "special military operation" can result in a 15-year jail sentence, but Prigozhin had free rein to take pot shots at defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Ukraine campaign commander, Valery Gerasimov.
How a former convict—trusted enough to be given billions of dollars of government contracts and tacitly tasked with spearheading Moscow's fight for Bakhmut—came to bite the hand that fed him has raised questions about who knew what and when.
In an op-ed for Newsweek, Rebekah Koffler, a former DIA officer, questioned how an army could invade Russia and advance on Moscow only to come to a swift agreement with Putin in which no one gets hurt.
She said Prigozhin's actions were "staged" and part of a "completely faked false flag operation." The aim in her view was for Putin to convince Russians ahead of a 2024 election that without him they may face invasion from the West and chaos.
A Kyiv Post op-ed by Steve Brown also asked whether the mutiny could have been "another example of Putin disinformation," citing the Russian military doctrine of maskirovka or deception. Questions remain over the inability of Russian forces to stop Wagner bearing down on Moscow as Brown asked whether the rebellion could be "a pretext for a purge of those Putin considered to be disloyal."
Yevgeny Prigozhin, right, is pictured with Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2010. The Kremlin statement that Putin met Prigozhin five days after the Wagner founder staged a mutiny conceals as much as it reveals about the rebellion and its aftermath.ALEXEY DRUZHININ/GETTY IMAGES
Russian opposition politician Ilya Ponomarev, whose group Congress of People's Deputies seeks the collapse of the Putin regime, recently told Newsweek he thought the Russian leader was aware of Prigozhin's plans and used them to his advantage,
While he did not know if the pair had concocted the plan together, Ponomarev believed that Putin had traded "tactical advantages for strategic costs" with the rebellion.
The idea of a choreographed mutiny has gained traction among some commentators although questions remain over how Putin could have known of an operation that, in the eyes of many, left him weakened.
Russian propaganda expert, Diane Nemec Ignashev, a professor at Carleton College in Minnesota, said that the Kremlin is trying to create a new narrative out of what happened.
"For anyone who was watching or listening as events unrolled, there was too much confusion in the media, too many crossed messages, too much speculation, for a playbook to have existed," she told Newsweek.
"The Kremlin is attempting to cover up the obvious—Putin had no idea what was happening and this is a scenario no one in the media was prepared for," Ignashev added.
Gregory Vitarbo, a hstory professor at Meredith College in North Carolina, said that the optics of Prigozhin's advance on Moscow making Putin look weak left the idea that the mutiny was stage-managed "the least likely possibility."
Even in a restricted Russian media environment, "the contrast between Putin making an extraordinary national address promising ruthless resistance…only to then acquiesce to a deal brokered by his junior partner Lukashenko, cannot but be lost on a domestic audience," he told Newsweek.
Little is known about the immunity deal Prigozhin got apart from his exile to Belarus and the dropping of legal action against him and his fighters.
Prigozhin's presence in Russia and his meeting with Putin likely indicate that they are still working out the details of the deal and planning Wagner's future role, said Tom Roberts, assistant professor of Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
"It seems unlikely that Putin knew of the mutiny plot in advance, let alone that he could have staged the rebellion as a provocation or loyalty test, as there is far too much at stake for the Russian president," he told Newsweek.
Russian aircraft were destroyed, and both Wagner forces and the Russian military suffered casualties.
"I find it odd that Putin and Prigozhin would have openly welcomed additional death and destruction within Russia while they were wreaking havoc in Ukraine," Mark Temnycky, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Newsweek. "Prigozhin had initially thought he had greater support from high-ranking Russian officials and military officers who did not come to his aid when he launched his insurrection."
"It is possible Putin and those loyal to him learned about the attack, and they quickly undermined Prigozhin's support," he said. "This caught Wagner off guard, and at that point, Wagner was too far involved in this operation. Prigozhin likely believed that he could not turn back."
