With the withdrawal of the mercenaries from Moscow only 24 hours after Wagner’s manager Yevgeny Prigozhin called for an insurrection, he appears at first sight to be the loser in open conflict, especially given that Russia now sends it to Belarus drop the case against him. The image of the all-powerful president, Vladimir Putin, has also faltered a bit, but so far it has been preserved. Russian Defense Minister Serhii Shoigu, whose head Prigozhin actually wanted, remained at the head of the department. So who is the biggest loser in this armed uprising? The AFP analysis attempts to answer this question.

They were naked together in distant Siberia, went fishing together and played on the same hockey team.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has long been considered not only a political ally of President Vladimir Putin, but also one of the Kremlin’s few friends among the Russian elite.

But this idyllic friendship (bromande) between them is now undergoing its biggest test since the armed uprising led by the leader of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has repeatedly criticized the Ministry of Defense for the way it handled the invasion of Ukraine.

The volatile Prigozhin on Friday accused the Russian army of bombing his Wagner group’s bases at the request of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whom he promised to “stop” with military force.

The great winner and the great loser of the one-day uprising

AFP notes that Putin appears to have survived the uprising so far after an unexpected mediation led by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. But Shoigu’s position remains very shaky because of the unprecedented severity of Prigozhin’s attacks on him and his ministry.

Prigozhin managed to capture the southern headquarters of the Russian army in Rostov-on-Don, the nerve center of the invasion of Ukraine, and accused Shoigu of fleeing “like a coward” and promised to “stop him”.

The Minister of Defense was nowhere to be seen at the time and has now completely disappeared from view.

Wagner’s boss previously accused Shoigu and Russian General Valery Gerasimov of being responsible for the deaths of “tens of thousands of Russians” during the conflict in Ukraine and “surrendering territory to the enemy.”

So, “the big winner of the evening was Lukashenko,” said Arnaud Dubien, director of the Franco-Russian Observatory think tank. “Shoigu was a big loser.”

For the first time, Lukashenko looks like a person with power

Belarusian dictator Oleksandr Lukashenko appears to have benefited from Wagner’s rebellion against Moscow, although, as the Guardian points out, those benefits may not last long.

He appeared in the Russian press as the hero of the moment, the man who saved Moscow.

This is a huge step up from the fragile interim satrap role that Lukashenko has played since Vladimir Putin stepped in to save the regime after its apparent defeat in the 2020 elections.

For the past three years, Lukashenko has agreed to a “state alliance with Russia,” allowed his country to become a staging ground for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and offered to keep Russian tactical nuclear warheads in Belarus while rumors swirled. about his health.

Now it will house another secret and dangerous weapon of Putin – Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“The President of Belarus informed the President of Russia in detail about the results of the negotiations with the management of the “Wagner” PMC,” said the official statement of Lukashenka’s Office. “The President of Russia supported him and thanked his Belarusian colleague for the work done.”

This, although Artem Shreibman, a freelance fellow at the Carnegie Eurasian Center in Russia, does not believe that “we have good reasons to believe that Prigozhin is listening to Lukashenko and his assurances, and that Lukashenko has enough leverage and power in the Russian language. domestic policy to be a mediator of such operations.”

Olga Onukh, a politics lecturer at the University of Manchester, even said that “there are suggestions that Lukashenko was not actually involved in the talks during the day and somehow took the stage very quickly after the announcement.”

Whatever his true role, Lukashenko is the official guarantor of the deal and at least appears on the Russian stage as his own leader, not just an extension of the Kremlin.

The rise and fall of Shoigu

Even before the uprising broke out on Friday night, Shoigu was under enormous pressure from Prigozhin’s attacks and the failure of the Russian armed forces to make progress.

On June 12, a video of Putin and Shoigu at a medal ceremony at a military hospital was widely shared, with the Russian president turning his back on the defense minister in apparent disdain.

Shoigu has had a political career unparalleled in post-Soviet Russia, and his presence at the center of power in Moscow predates Putin himself.

Originally from the Tuva region of southern Siberia, Shoigu is one of the few non-ethnic Russians to hold the highest public office since the collapse of the USSR.

He began his rise in 1994, when he was appointed Minister of Emergency Situations in the early years of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency.

Shoigu became familiar and steadfast to Russians and one of the country’s most popular politicians as he raced around the country to deal with disasters ranging from plane crashes to earthquakes.

He held the post until 2012, when he was appointed governor of Moscow Oblast, and was quickly appointed defense minister by Putin that same year following a corruption scandal that toppled his predecessor, Anatoly Serdyukov.

He was immediately appointed a general despite his lack of high-level military experience, but he successfully led operations, including the 2015 intervention in Syria that kept Moscow’s ally Bashar al-Assad in power.

On his 65th birthday, Putin gave his friend a special gift, one of Russia’s highest honors, the Medal of Merit to the Fatherland, to add to his already full chest of awards.

But the much less successful invasion of Ukraine – although the Kremlin hoped that Russian tanks would reach Kyiv – constantly raises questions about its future.

“Prygozhin wanted to send a message that Shoigu and Gerasimov should be fired because they are incompetent and a change in strategy is needed,” said Pierre Razou, academic director of the Foundation for Mediterranean Strategic Studies (FMES) in France.

No more macho-friendly expressions or images like in 2017 of two men with unbuttoned shirts sunbathing on their chests by a river in Siberia.

Instead, Shoigu is reduced to meetings in which he reports to Putin, or simply to discussions via video link between him and Putin.

Prigozhin also targeted the Shoigu family, particularly his daughter Ksenia’s husband, Oleksiy Stolyarov, a fitness blogger who shied away from the war and was accused by opposition media of smearing an anti-invasion publication.

Russian-language Telegram channels were abuzz with speculation about who could become Shoigu’s successor, and Tula Oblast Governor Oleksiy Dyumin, who held high positions in the military and presidential security services, was considered the favorite.

“Shoigu’s group is on the verge of collapse, and Sergey Kuzhugetovich himself is in disgrace and will most likely resign,” the Preemnik telegram station said.

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