European Union foreign ministers say an aborted mutiny in Russia at the weekend shows Moscow’s war in Ukraine is causing domestic instability and undermining its military power, but stress their focus remains on supporting Kyiv.
Key points:
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Germany’s foreign minister said Mr Putin had destroyed his own country with his “brutal war of aggression” in Ukraine
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The EU will focus on helping Ukraine with its fight against Russia
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Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has made his first known appearance in public since the mutiny
Wagner mercenary forces under renegade leader Yevgeny Prigozhin seized control of military headquarters in southern Russia, then began to move towards Moscow on Saturday before suddenly heading back to eastern Ukraine after a deal with the Kremlin.
“The political system is showing fragilities, and the military power is cracking,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters in Luxembourg as he arrived for a meeting with ministers from across the 27-member bloc.
“It’s not a good thing to see that a nuclear power like Russia can go into a phase of political instability,” Mr Borrell said, adding this was the moment for the EU to continue supporting Ukraine more than ever.
Mr Borrell said Russian President Vladimir Putin was paying the price for creating a “monster” with Mr Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group.
“The monster that Putin created with Wagner, the monster is biting him now, the monster is acting against his creator.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Mr Putin was destroying his own country with his “brutal war of aggression” in Ukraine.
“We are seeing massive cracks in the Russian propaganda,” she added.
Ms Baerbock said the EU would focus on helping Ukraine in its fight to let its people live in peace and freedom.
The ministers stressed the mutiny was an internal Russian matter, with no outside involvement. But they also made clear it had implications far beyond Russia’s borders.
“It would be absolutely dangerous for Europe if the biggest country of the world with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons was to be shattered,” Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said.
Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said Mr Putin should follow Mr Prigozhin’s example and “turn around”.
Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen suggested the weekend’s events showed Mr Putin’s hold on power was not as strong as it seemed.
“It is common for authoritarian states that everything seems to be very stable until one day, nothing is stable anymore. And I expect such a development for Russia as well,” she told reporters.
Shoigu spotted in public
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was shown speaking to troops in a video released by his ministry on Monday, his first known appearance in public since the mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group.
There was no sound on the video and it was not immediately clear where or when the visit had taken place.
Mr Shoigu was shown flying in a plane with a colleague and hearing reports at a command post run by Russia’s Zapad (West) military grouping.
The Defence Ministry TV channel, Zvezda, said Mr Shoigu, who looked physically unharmed and calm, had listened to a report by Colonel General Yevgeny Nikiforov, the group’s commander, about the current situation on the front lines in Ukraine.
In his mutiny, during which he seized control of Russia’s military headquarters in southern Russia, renegade Mr Prigozhin had demanded that Mr Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, be handed over to him so that he could “restore justice”.
Mr Prigozhin accused both men of gross incompetence and corruption and had long been agitating for their removal.
Mr Gerasimov has not been seen since in public, and there was no word from the Kremlin about any new personnel changes when it described the deal that had ended the mutiny.
The Kremlin said the question of personnel changes was the sole prerogative of President Vladimir Putin and could hardly have been part of any deal.
Zvezda said Mr Shoigu on his visit had heard about the formation of new reserve forces for the “Zapad” military grouping and had noted what it called the Russian army’s “high efficiency” at “detecting and destroying enemy military equipment and accumulations of personnel in tactical areas”.
He had tasked them with continuing active reconnaissance in order to reveal the enemy’s plans and so thwart Ukrainian forces’ movements far behind the front lines, it said.
Zvezda said Mr Shoigu had also paid particular attention to what it called “the organisation of all-round support for the troops involved in the Special Military Operation and the creation of conditions for the safe housing of personnel”.
Mutineers led by Mr Prigozhin on Saturday advanced towards Moscow to remove what they called Russia’s corrupt and incompetent military leadership, before suddenly heading back to a Russia-held area of eastern Ukraine after a deal with the Kremlin brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
The deal, as publicly described by the Kremlin, saw criminal charges against the mutineers dropped in exchange for their return to camps, with Mr Prigozhin said to be moving to Belarus.
A request for unity with Putin
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Monday that the country had faced “a challenge to its stability” and must remain united behind President Vladimir Putin following the abortive mutiny.
In what appeared to be the first public comments by a senior Russian official since then, Mr Mishustin appealed at a televised government meeting for national unity in the face of what he said were efforts by the West to undermine Russia.
“The main thing in these conditions is to ensure the sovereignty and independence of our country, the security and well-being of citizens,” said Mr Mishustin, a technocrat who was appointed prime minister in 2020.
“For this, the consolidation of the whole of society is especially important; we need to act together, as one team, and maintain the unity of all forces, rallying around the president,” he said.
Mr Mishustin, a former head of Russia’s federal tax service, also took a swipe at the West.
“As the president noted, virtually the entire military, economic, information machine of the West is directed against us,” he said.
Mr Putin said on Saturday that the rebellion by the Wagner mercenary force had threatened Russia’s very existence and vowed to crush it.
However, he has not publicly commented since then on the dramatic events or on the deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that defused the crisis.
Reuters