Biden and US allies backing Ukraine in its defense against Russian invasion emphasized their claim to be seen out of the shock mercenary mutiny, the biggest threat to Putin in his two decades at the helm of Russia. . They worry that the Russian president could use accusations that the West was involved in the revolt to make the Russians close ranks with him.
Biden and government officials declined to give an immediate assessment of what the 22-hour uprising by the Wagner Group could mean for the war in Ukraine, for mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, or for Russia itself.
“We will continue to assess the consequences of the events of this weekend and the implications for Russia and Ukraine,” Biden declared. “But it’s still too early to make a definitive conclusion about where this is going.”
In his first public comments since the rebellion, Putin declared that “enemies of Russia” had hoped that the mutiny would divide and weaken the country, “but they miscalculated.” He said those enemies were “the neo-Nazis in kyiv, their Western patrons and other national traitors.”
And Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reported that the special services were already investigating whether Western intelligence services were involved in the Prigozhin rebellion.
During the tumultuous weekend in Russia, US diplomats were in contact with their Moscow counterparts to stress that the US government viewed the issue as internal to Russia and of which the US was merely a bystander, said Matthew Miller, State Department spokesman.
US diplomats also stressed to Moscow that they expected the Russian government to guarantee the safety of the US embassy in the Russian capital and that of Americans detained in Russia.
In a video call between Biden and American allies over the weekend, all were determined not to give Putin “any excuse to blame this on the West,” Biden told reporters at the White House.
“We made it clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” the US president asserted. “This was part of a fight within the Russian system.”
Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, said Putin has in the past alleged Washington’s clandestine involvement in various events — including democratic uprisings in former Soviet republics, and pro-democracy campaigns inside and outside Russia — as a way to diminish public support among Russians for those challenges to the Russian system.
The United States and NATO “do not want to be given the appearance of trying to destabilize Putin,” McFaul reiterated.
Friction between Prigozhin and the Russian military leadership, which has escalated during the war, led to a mutiny in which mercenaries left Ukraine to seize a military headquarters in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. They advanced hundreds of kilometers in the direction of Moscow before backing out on Saturday, in an agreement the terms of which remain unknown.
Biden’s national security team briefed him hourly as Prigozhin’s forces pushed deeper into Russia, the president said. He had asked them to “prepare for various scenarios” as the Russian crisis unfolded, he added.
Biden did not elaborate on those scenarios. But Homeland Security spokesman John Kirby touched on a concern frequently raised by the public, the media and others as the world watched cracks open in Putin’s power: concerns that the Russian leader could take extreme measures to reassert its dominance.
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AP writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
FUENTE: Associated Press
