Just like in the fable of Peter and the wolf – where from saying so much “the wolf is coming”, nobody believed it when it really came -, Prigozhin threatened so many times to distance himself from the Russian Ministry of Defense that, when it finally happened, hardly anyone believed that it would have a run.
We say “almost” no one because, according to the response of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, everything indicates that intelligence –probably local and also that provided by allied countries to Kiev– did handle truthful information in this regard. And so there was a military response prepared.
Hours before the chief of the Wagner mercenaries began to publish the videos – which have been about to unleash a civil war in Russia–, the Zelensky Army mobilized thousands of troops and launched a series of coordinated combat operations in Kupyansk, Bakhmut, Zaporizhia and –already yesterday afternoon– also in Kherson.
Although it is true that the Ukrainian Army was already mobilized, because the counteroffensive officially started on June 4 –a month earlier, according to some sources who consider that the operations carried out in May, to “test” the Russian response on some points, were already part of it–, it cannot be ignored that a response from these dimensions, and which involves tens of thousands of men, is not planned in a few hours.
Chronology of an unannounced offensive
In the first person, and still without understanding what was to come, I myself witnessed this early deployment in Kupyanskwhere I traveled on Friday morning to interview the local authority of the city and access, along with one of the brigades deployed in the area, to the front line.
However, at the end of the interview with the head of the Military Administration, they told me that it was not possible to join the military forces at that moment because “They had all gone on combat missions”. An operation that had not been planned the previous afternoon, when they confirmed that he could work with them.
The scene was repeated on the Bakhmut front lines. But there it was even more visible, because they came road reinforcements from other provincessuch as Kharkov, who joined the thousands of troops stationed in Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Konstantinivka to deploy that same afternoon.
By the time Prigozhin published his final ordeal along with a manifesto titled ‘March for Justice’, several Ukrainian battalions had changed provinces to deploy in the most critical points –above all Bakhmut–, and take advantage of the possible chaos in the Russian ranks to try to open a gap.
On Saturday morning, the news that arrived about the Ukrainian military advances in this city confirmed that Zelensky’s troops had re-entered the city and were fighting for the western neighborhoods of Bakhmut.
Popcorn and late night shelling
With frenetic activity on all fronts, it was hard to talk to the military leading the operations. But one of the commanders, when asked about the consequences of Prigozhin’s rebellion –and the plausible advantage it offered them– replied that both he and his men “we don’t believe too much in such things, we we continue to work with our own hands in the counteroffensive”.
The usual little plays staged by the mercenary chief generate as much expectation as mistrust among the Ukrainians. Especially among combatants who have already tasted the harshness of the battlefield.
But the civilian population perceived what was happening with a halo of hope – and quite a sense of humor. And as videos were posted on Telegram news channels with images of what was happening at the Wagner headquarters in Rostov-on-Don or St. Petersburg, social media was overflowing with memes.
Those who made reference to buying popcorn to “watch the movie” prevailed, along with the comments that they considered that the internal Kremlin disputes and the division within its military force indisputably benefited Ukraine.
However, the Kremlin extinguished this momentary state of happiness in the middle of the war with a missile hit: Russia launched a massive bombardment at three in the morning from Friday to Saturday over kyiv, Zaporizhia and Kharkov, where two S-300s hit the center of the city.
‘Swan Lake’ and the 1917 Revolution
Almost at the same time that the attacks were launched, the ballet “Swan Lake” was broadcast on loop on Russian state television channels. Thus they avoided any informative program to show how the Kremlin army – and Kadirov’s soldiers – were taking to the streets of some Russian cities, while also settling in check points in the accesses.
However, the signal of one of the channels was hackedand on the television screens of thousands of Russians the undisputed protagonist of this weekend began to appear -also in a loop-: Prigozhin, reciting his manifesto and explaining that this was not a coup, but a ‘March for Justice’ with which he wanted to clean up the corruption of Russian institutions.
Zelensky, for his part, did not speak out against the rebellion of the Wagner commander until Saturday at noon, at which time he addressed the Ukrainians – and the state that is trying to invade them – with one of his usual televised speeches:
“Everyone who chooses the path of evil destroys himself. (…) Russia used propaganda to mask its weakness and the stupidity of its government. And now there is so much chaos that no lie can hide it. And all this is done by one person, who fears over and over again [que se repita una revuelta como en] the year 1917 (…) Russia’s weakness is obvious. Large scale weakness. And the longer Russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain and problems it will have for itself later,” Zelensky said in his statement at noon.
Although his words were somewhat sobering, he did not get infected with that joy that could be glimpsed in the streets of Ukraine. In Russia, however, optimism dried up almost as fast as plane tickets out of the country.
Tickets to fly to Turkey were paid up to 20 times more from its usual price, and photos of queues at airports showed the desperation of some Russian citizens.
Late on Saturday, a new script twist in the form of a video –published, of course, by Telegram– showed a Prigozhin repented and saying that he was backing down. The Ukrainians responded by assuring that they had popcorn left to see what would happen on Sunday with “the circus that the Russians had set up.”
Irony aside, now we must wait to find out if the Ukrainian counter-offensive will continue to step on the acceleratorand if they have managed to take advantage of the most critical 24 hours that he has lived in the Kremlin in recent years.
