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Russia’s defense minister has appeared for the first time since this weekend’s dramatic armed rebellion that sought to oust him from power and developed into the biggest challenge to President Vladimir Putin in more than 20 years of rule.
Sergei Shoigu was shown visiting troops involved in the war in Ukraine, according to a video released by his ministry early Monday. It was not immediately clear where or when the video was taken, but its release was seen as a deliberate signal as rumors and uncertainty swirled over the future of the country’s military leaders and the deal the Kremlin claimed to have reached to end the crisis.
Shoigu was the first top Russian official shown publicly since the revolt — a stunning escalation of a long-running feud between the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and the military’s top brass. There was still no sign of Putin or the mercenary leader who launched the sudden challenge to his authority.
The dizzying nature of the armed rebellion and its abrupt conclusion left many in Russia, the West and beyond with questions.
The future of the Wagner chief and his rebels, who seized a key city and made it within some 120 miles of Moscow before turning back, was uncertain. Putin’s regime appeared weakened but intact. And the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine faced new complications, though it was unclear exactly how crucial the chaos inside Russia might prove on the battlefield.
The footage released Monday and broadcast on Russian state media showed Shoigu traveling in an aircraft and attending a meeting with other military officials. In a sign of the frenzied speculation on Russian social media, some military bloggers — who have become increasingly influential voices in the country — suggested that the footage was recorded ahead of Prigozhin’s rebellion. NBC News was not able to verify that claim.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Monday he was lifting all restrictions from the “counter-terrorism regime” imposed in a bid to halt the mercenaries’ march. Military checkpoints had been established, roads torn up and public events canceled.
‘New questions’
The apparent effort to project a sense of order followed a mutiny that left Putin’s strongman rule in unprecedented uncertainty.
The Russian leader has not surfaced — aside from a televised speech to the nation Saturday in which he likened the situation to the Russian revolution of 1917 and called for the mercenaries to be “neutralized.” State TV also ran an interview with Putin on Sunday afternoon but it was not clear when it was recorded.
Similarly there was no sign of the man at the center of the drama, Prigozhin.
Wagner has been responsible for some of Russia’s few victories in Ukraine, but Prigozhin has grown increasingly hostile toward his own country’s army. He blamed Shoigu and other leaders for botching the war, and announced late Friday that his troops would be leaving Ukraine to return home and effectively try to depose the defense minister.
That quickly turned into a direct confrontation with the Kremlin, as Prigozhin and his men bore down on Moscow after Putin denounced the move as a “stab in the back.”
Then they suddenly turned back, the product of a purported deal that would see Prigozhin leave for Belarus and the charges dropped against his fighters — who Putin had hours earlier accused of treason.
However, Russian state media reported Monday that the criminal case initially launched against Prigozhin for inciting an armed rebellion was not closed. The reports cited an unnamed source close to the Prosecutor General’s Office.
NBC News has reached out to the prosecutor for comment.
The Wagner chief was filmed late Saturday leaving Rostov-on-Don, the southern Russian city where his men had captured strategic buildings, to cheers from the public. But that was the last time he was seen in public and he has not confirmed any deal.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday that after Prigozhin’s rebellion, “more cracks emerge in the Russian façade” and there are “all sorts of new questions” that Putin will have to address in the weeks and months ahead.
U.S. intelligence agencies collected information that Prigozhin had been planning a challenge to Russia’s senior military leaders and briefed Congressional leaders about it last week, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News.
U.S. spy agencies observed the Wagner Group amassing forces and weapons and detected other indications that Prigozhin was poised to make a move, the source said, although the intelligence wasn’t definitive.
It comes after months in which Putin allowed the feud between Prigozhin and the leaders in Moscow to fester.
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