Wagner chief breaks his silence: Prigozhin releases 11-minute audio file on since halting mutiny
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00:00 We can now bring in France 24's international affairs commentator, Douglas Herbert.
00:03 Doug, great to see you.
00:05 Now, you this audio recording, which Yevgeny Pugoshin has just released, is 11 minutes long.
00:10 You've only heard a part of it.
00:11 Tell us what he had to say.
00:12 Yeah, and I emphasize only bits and pieces.
00:14 I heard it's 11 minutes.
00:15 It's making its way across Telegram, the favorite communication platform for a lot of Russian Russians right now.
00:22 Basically, he's doubling down in what his original message was.
00:25 You know, we had heard a lot about the Russian defense ministry's ambitions, its plans to pass a law that would have required all of Wagner's mercenary fighters to sign contracts to officially join Russia's regular army.
00:39 That is something that essentially Pugoshin makes no bones about in this audio recording, says that was not going to happen.
00:45 There was never anyone, no agreement was signed that any of these Wagner fighters would go over to the Russian army.
00:52 He did say, yes, there was a very small number hovering around 2 percent of his fighters that did decide to go over to the Russian armed forces.
01:01 Those who wanted to go have already gone, he said.
01:04 Those remaining with him now presumably will be the ones remaining.
01:07 But like you said, his main points were that he never intended, this was not an operation, this was not a drive, as many describe it, to overthrow Russia's leadership.
01:16 So once again, insinuating that this was not, even though he's criticized the military leadership and insinuated Putin also has made some mistakes, this was not a move to overthrow Putin.
01:26 At least the message emanating from this.
01:28 Rather, this was a march for justice, as he puts it.
01:31 He's fighting on behalf of the Russian people to hold accountable those who have bungled this, what the Russians call the special military operation in Ukraine, the war in Ukraine.
01:41 And basically to hold the military leadership accountable, not for regime change, not in his own interest to seize power.
01:48 Those are the messages that I was able to get in the little bit I was able to listen to.
01:52 Like I said, it's an 11 minute recording.
01:54 It just came out just before we went to air.
01:56 Now, Vladimir Putin is going about his day as normal.
01:59 The Russian president addressed a youth forum this Monday.
02:02 Authorities clearly eager to show that everything is in order.
02:05 Back to normal. Nothing to see here.
02:07 Carry on.
02:08 This is basically, you know, Russia's state television propaganda.
02:12 This has been essentially their guiding principle in all of their messaging since the outbreak of the war.
02:17 This happening to be one of the most tumultuous events in Russia's internal politics since the beginning of the war.
02:23 They want to show a Putin who's at work, a Putin who, like you said, he did not even mention the mutiny in this video address that he gave.
02:31 It was video.
02:32 He did not appear in person to an industrial forum.
02:35 He did talk about vaguely, ambiguously the challenges facing Russia, but not referring at any point, obviously, to Prigozhin, not referring to the mutiny, basically not mentioning.
02:47 Yeah, not mentioning the story that the entire planet is right now talking about compulsively throughout the past, you know, 20 news cycles.
02:55 So no mention there.
02:58 Going about his business.
02:59 Also, as you mentioned, the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, shown in video what the Russian media says was visiting perhaps troops on the front line in Ukraine.
03:09 But he was in a helicopter.
03:11 The sound is off.
03:12 There is no way to determine exactly when this video was shot.
03:15 The sound, like I said, it was mute video.
03:18 So everything basically trying to present that air of normality, trying to project a message to Russians.
03:25 This was a quick flash in the pan, a one off Putin effectively, efficiently sawed off.
03:31 He's back in business.
03:32 You can continue your day.
03:33 That said, Moscow is officially right now on a non-working day while things officially at least settle down.
03:40 Now, Doug, you mentioned this, that this past weekend's events in Russia raised eyebrows around the world.
03:46 Here's a look at some of the reactions coming out of Moscow itself.
03:49 Overall, I feel relief, but I didn't notice anything special going on.
03:54 There was no danger.
03:56 Everything was quiet and peaceful.
03:57 I feel relief because there was no armed conflict.
04:02 Apart from that, we didn't feel much panic.
04:04 We've survived far worse since 1985.
04:07 We get used to everything.
04:09 Doug, those residents sound rather blase, don't they?
04:13 Nonchalant is the word.
04:15 This is, you know, the cliched Russian stoicism.
04:18 We've seen it all.
04:19 Russia's been through everything.
04:20 We have taken the hits in the past.
04:22 This is yet another hit.
04:24 You know, a lot of the population, obviously not all of it, there is that sense of resignation laced with that stoicism, but also a sense of the politics.
04:33 It's far away.
04:34 People don't want to get involved.
04:35 They go about their lives.
04:37 You know, when I was there in 1991 for the August 1991 coup, same thing.
04:42 You know, while the headlines were riveted on the tanks rolling down the boulevards of Moscow, you had whole segments of the swaths of the population in Moscow, old babushki going about their business, buying potatoes, you know, just going to the
04:54 markets, business as usual, just another day.
04:56 For a lot of Russians, they're either very ill-informed or uninformed about events going on or a little cynical.
05:03 And I guess you could forgive a lot of them for being that, about politics in general, just basically tuning it all out.
05:08 And if you ask some of them, so, you know, after Saturday, once the mutiny was over, once Prigozhin ordered his forces to back off, to turn back, a lot of Russians, their reaction was, oh, OK, it's over.
05:20 That's done and dusted.
05:21 Let's move on.
05:21 And that is still the prevailing attitude.
05:23 Yes, you will find people, predominantly a lot younger people, perhaps more tuned in, bigger cities, more Internet savvy who do know what's going on.
05:32 And occasionally you will get in those soundbites.
05:34 We didn't hear it there.
05:35 Few people saying like this is this is all happening because of the chaos unleashed by Putin.
05:40 Some will even name him his war.
05:42 They will call it a war.
05:44 They will say bringing chaos upon this country and a lot of uncertainty and hardship for millions of people.
05:50 That's a very small fraction of Russians.
05:53 Most of them are either be numbed, and that's the word to use, by the state TV propaganda or apathetic or cynical or resigned or stoic or a combination of all.
06:03 You don't have that sort of population that you had back in back in 1991 when I was there for that first coup, turning out onto the streets, the mass Democratic opposition answering the rally cries of Boris Yeltsin when he climbed on that tank.
06:16 Don't know if you could get them out there anymore.
06:18 Putin has has basically intimidated a lot of the population.
06:21 They are now either too scared, too apprehensive or too resigned to go back out onto the streets, too fearful.
06:26 Or they've left the country.
06:27 Or they've left the country.
06:28 Thank you very much for that, Doug Douglas Herbert there.