Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Sunday that short rebellion headed by the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny V. Prigozhinrevealed the emerging rifts in President Vladimir V. Putin’s grip on power and cast doubt on the future of his war in Ukraine.
“Prigozhin himself in this whole incident has raised profound questions about the very premise of Russian aggression against Ukraine in the first place, saying that Ukraine or NATO pose no threat to Russia, that is. is part of Putin’s story,” Blinken said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And that’s a direct challenge to Putin’s authority.”
Blinken said that the internal challenges facing Putin could also hinder Russia’s war effort.
“To the extent that the Russians are distracted and divided, that could make it more difficult to prosecute them for the invasion of Ukraine,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” called the current instability in Russia “a cause for concern”.
In a series of television appearances on Sunday, Mr Blinken said the White House was closely monitoring developments in Russia, where a deal attack late on saturday appeared to end the rebellion.
The deal Mr Prigozhin reached is said to allow him and his fighters to escape prosecution, although US leaders do not know what will happen to him or his forces, Mr. said on “This Week”.
While Mr Blinken called the upheaval “basically an internal matter for the Russians”, he placed it within the same framework that US leaders have used for more than a year when discussing the conflict. aggression. The uprising, he said, was part of a broader “strategic failure” that made Russia economically and militarily weaker due to its all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
While Mr. Blinken suggested that Ukraine could take advantage of the sudden instability in Russia, it remains unclear whether that will happen.
“It will take some time, weeks, even months,” for the counterattack to succeed, he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There are very strong defenses that the Russians have built in recent months that the Ukrainians are trying to overcome. But in the end, the real bottom line is this, and that’s why Ukraine will prevail: This is about their land, this is about their future, this is about their freedom, not Russia’s. .”
Blinken said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, on Saturday, adding that the United States was “working to ensure that people Ukraine has what they need, when they need it, to do the best they can on the ground.”
Although he declined to speculate on what Mr. Prigozhin’s challenge to power might mean for the future, Mr Blinken said it “raises a lot of questions that we don’t have the answers to.” “.
“It’s too early to say exactly where this is going,” he said. “And I suspect that this is a moving picture and we haven’t seen the final act yet.”
