The latest on the aftermath of the armed rebellion declared by Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin:
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Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has made his first public appearance since a mercenary uprising demanded his ouster.
Shoigu appeared in a video Monday inspecting troops in Ukraine, apparently in a bid to project a sense of order after a weekend that saw armed rebels seize a Russian city and march seemingly unopposed on the capital.
Shoigu is one of three powerful Russian military leaders whose diverging interests erupted into mutiny on Friday when thousands of Wagner Group mercenaries headed from Ukraine deep into Russia, before turning around Saturday after less than 24 hours.
He is the first of the leaders to appear publicly since then, in video released by the Defense Ministry that was widely picked up by Russian media. It was unclear when it was filmed.
Neither Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin nor Russia's General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov — like Shoigu, a target of Prigozhin’s ire — has been seen or heard in public since then.
Prigozhin declared a “march of justice” to oust Shoigu and Gerasimov late Friday. Wagner mercenaries captured the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and then marched toward Moscow, but withdrew after the Kremlin announced a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to allow Prigozhin to move to Belarus and receive an amnesty, along with his soldiers.
Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t made any public appearances since issuing a brief televised address on Saturday during the mutiny.
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Speaking to reporters before chairing a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Luxembourg, the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the Wagner revolt showed that the war in Ukraine is “cracking Russia’s political system.”
“The monster that Putin created with Wagner, the monster is biting him now,” Borrel said Monday. “The monster is acting against his creator. The political system is showing fragilities, and the military power is cracking.”
Upon arriving to the meeting in Luxembourg, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg called Prigozhin a “megalomaniac mercenary leader,” and said the Wagner chief's mutiny showed that “the evil spirit is out of the bottle” in Putin's Russia.
"You almost have the feeling that the Russian president is like the sorcerer’s apprentice again. He can’t get rid of the ghosts he called, and they’re going to haunt him now,” Schallenberg said.
During comments in Vilnius, Lithuania on Monday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the weekend mutiny “an internal Russian matter,” but said it was “yet another demonstration of the big strategic mistake that President Putin made with his illegal annexation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg said Ukraine’s counteroffensive is well underway, and that “the more land they are able to liberate, the stronger their hand will eventually be at the negotiating table, to achieve a just and lasting peace.”
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:
Russian mercenary leader’s exile ends revolt but leaves questions about Putin’s power
Belarus deal to take in leader of Russian rebellion puts him in an even more repressive nation
The chaos in Russia is a morale booster for Ukraine as it pushes forward with its counteroffensive
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