Yevgeny Prigozhin uncovered the “most harmful” point about the Ukraine war for Russian President Vladimir Putin, previous U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claimed on Monday.
Rice appeared on Fox News to discuss the attempted rebellion led by Prigozhin, the founder of the paramilitary Wagner Group, who turned from Russian leadership amid the stagnating war in Ukraine. Prigozhin tried an armed rebellion in excess of the weekend that adopted months of expanding tension among him and the Kremlin.
“Most likely the most harmful factor about this is that Prigozhin said what has been unspoken by individuals who have supported the war,” claimed Rice, who served as secretary of state from 2005 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. “That this is essentially a war that did not have to choose put, exactly where hundreds of hundreds of Russians did not have to die, exactly where a million people didn’t have to flee the region. That, to me, is the most damaging point that Prigozhin has done [to Putin].”
Despite the fact that the tried revolt lasted significantly less than 24 hrs in advance of a offer was brokered to conclude the conflict and Wagner troops turned back again from their route to Moscow, Rice said Prigozhin’s remarks about the war in Ukraine could be troubling for Putin, who released the Ukraine invasion on February 24, 2022, and has seen Russia battle to make considerable gains amid Kyiv’s much better-than-expected defense effort.
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Prigozhin accused the Kremlin of lying about the justifications to invade Ukraine in a 30-minute online video posted to his Telegram channel. He said very little “incredible” was going on in Ukraine prior to the invasion, casting doubt on Putin’s accusations of Ukrainian “aggression.”
“The Ministry of Protection is striving to deceive the public and the president and spin the tale that there had been insane stages of aggression from the Ukrainian facet and that they were likely to assault us jointly with the full NATO block,” Prigozhin mentioned. “The particular operation was started off for a fully diverse purpose.”
Rice reported Prigozhin’s remarks “exploded” Putin’s “myth that the Ukrainian special military services procedure could choose place on any effect on Russia” and his assert that it was a “just and necessary war.”
While quite a few earth leaders and specialists have extensive doubted Putin’s justifications for the war—with numerous viewing the invasion as a blatant try at getting handle of Ukraine to create his legacy—Prigozhin’s remarks are notable in that he is a former ally of the Russian president and his troops fought alongside the Russian armed forces in critical battles all through the war.
Javed Ali, an affiliate professor of observe at the Gerald R. Ford College of General public Policy, informed Newsweek Monday afternoon that Prigozhin’s remarks have been the “most blunt and direct repudiation of President Putin’s lengthy-standing claims that Russia’s ‘special military services operation’ was justified irrespective of the huge military services, financial, diplomatic, and now internal political expenditures.”
“This will have a extraordinary outcome on well known support for the marketing campaign with the Russian persons, and may also undercut morale with Russian forces now struggling with a Ukrainian counteroffensive,” he said.
Ali reported Prigozhin will keep on to “agitate in opposition to Putin” despite being exiled to Belarus, whose President Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal to avoid “bloodshed” by supplying him amnesty although ending the riot.
“His increase as a battlefield leader and political rival to Putin has been hanging, and presented Putin’s past heritage of silencing opponents by different usually means, it also would not be shocking for Putin to sooner or later switch on Prigozhin as well,” he explained.
Rice explained the rebellion’s total impact on Russian morale will be acknowledged when term of the mutiny spreads to troops and by the reaction of professional-Moscow army bloggers.
Newsweek arrived at out to Rice by using the Hoover Institution, of which she is the director, for comment.
Rice stated Putin “put this in movement” by making it possible for a feud concerning Prigozhin and Protection Minister Sergei Shoigu and a military not managed by the federal government to struggle in the war. She also stated she questioned no matter if Putin was staging the rise up at just one issue.
“But you would not phase some thing that helps make you glimpse so weak,” she reported. “For the reason that, seriously, dictators, authoritarians relaxation on a few concepts. A person is there has to be dread in the population. Secondly, you have to seem invincible. Third, there can be no options. This has exploded all of those for Putin.”
Update 06/26/2023 6:30 p.m. ET: This story was up-to-date with comment from Javed Ali.
