WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden sought to preempt any talk from President Vladimir Putin that the West provoked the mercenary rebellion that shook Russia over the weekend, saying the United States and NATO had played no role and were still weighing its consequences.
In his first public comments about the matter, Biden said it was still too soon to make any conclusions about the revolt by Wagner Group mercenaries and their leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Officials briefing heads of state in the U.S. and Europe cautioned against predictions that Putin will emerge weakened, or that it will be a gain for Ukrainian troops in the midst of a counteroffensive.
Biden’s remarks followed several days of silence from the White House and were echoed by numerous U.S. and allied leaders Monday. Several people familiar with the allied approach said leaders want to keep the focus on the internal divisions posed by Prigozhin’s mutiny and show that the Ukraine invasion has divided Russians — while Ukraine and the west remain united.
“If your enemy is tearing itself apart, you stand back,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor, the vice president for Europe and Russia at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said in an interview. “You let him do it.”
The U.S. calculus also was based on Putin’s past statements accusing the U.S. of fomenting instability in Russia and around the world. In 2011, he accused then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of orchestrating protests across his country. He blamed the U.S. for the ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president in 2014, and his government said Western encirclement forced him to invade Ukraine last year.
“We gave Putin no excuse to blame this on the West or to blame this on NATO,” Biden said. “We made clear that we were not involved, we had nothing to do with it, this was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”
Hours after Biden spoke, Putin delivered a speech that bore out some of those allied fears. He said the rebellion by Prigozhin — whom he didn’t cite by name — had united Russians. Putin said internal strife was precisely the outcome the West wanted, though he stopped short of blaming allies directly.
“They wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other,” Putin said. “They rubbed their hands, dreaming of taking revenge for their failures at the front and during the so-called counteroffensive — but they miscalculated.”
Several Western officials, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, warned that the insurrection could lead Putin to tighten his grip on power — and escalate the conflict in Ukraine in a way that would trouble members of the Russian elite pushing for a quick resolution.
The officials emphasized Monday that Prigozhin questioned not just the execution of Russia’s war in Ukraine, but also the original premise of the invasion. While most of his criticism has been aimed at Russian officials like Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, challenging Putin’s explanation for the conflict inches closer to criticism of Putin personally.
Given the opacity of any authoritarian regime, it’s unclear how deep the criticism of the 17-month conflict in Ukraine goes, according to U.S. and European officials. By Monday, Prigozhin appeared to backtrack, saying he hadn’t been trying to oust Putin.
Even so, officials said there had been a shift given Prigozhin’s early remarks.
“Now, the full story of this weekend’s events and the long-term effects will take some time to become clear and it is not helpful to speculate,” U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said. “But Prigozhin’s rebellion is an unprecedented challenge to President Putin’s authority, and it is clear that cracks are emerging in the Russian support for the war.”
Biden said he had told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that “no matter what happened in Russia,” the U.S. and its allies would remain committed to Ukraine’s defense. In keeping with that commitment, the U.S. was set to announce a new $500 million package of military hardware for Ukraine drawn from Pentagon inventories.
The main concern for the international community is the security of Russia’s nuclear arsenal and how — or if — Putin plans to use it if pressure on him builds. While Prigozhin’s march is publicly being treated as an internal Russia affair for now, nuclear safety is the top issue that could draw in multilateral organizations like the United nations, according to people familiar with the matter.
Another key question is what will happen to the Wagner fighters responsible for some of the worst atrocities in Ukraine, who are headed to Belarus after that country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko said he forged an agreement with Putin to allow the mutinous forces to retreat with no immediate consequence.
Taking the roughly 25,000 Wagner fighters off the battlefield, even in the short term, could open opportunities for Ukrainian fighters seeking to regain territory on the Eastern front.
Wess Mitchell, a former assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and co-founder of the Marathon Initiative, described the divisions within Russia as a “huge strategic opportunity” for Ukraine.
“For Ukraine, their adversary is starting to crack and the question is how to exploit those cracks,” Mitchell said. “It’s a balancing act for the West, in that you could end up with someone worse.”
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(Bloomberg staff writers Iain Marlow and Jennifer Jacobs contributed to this story.)
