Moscow (BLAZETRENDS).- The Russians wonder where their president is when they need him most. While drones attack Moscow and enemy raids on the Ukrainian border continue, the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, seems absent and focused exclusively on the most daily affairs.
“Why the hell are these drones allowed in Moscow?” Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, asked, echoing the sentiments of many Russians.
Putin has not addressed the nation or convened the Security Council in any of the latest attacks on Russian territory and has not even gone to the Belgorod region, by far the most affected by the recent escalation.
With the 2024 presidential election just around the corner, the president appears more hesitant and indecisive than ever, analysts say, waiting for China to bail him out of the Ukrainian quagmire.
Putin, the great absentee
The closest the Kremlin chief has come is to telephone the mayor of the border town of Shebekino, where two other civilians were killed on Saturday in shelling by Ukrainian artillery.
The political agenda seems to be set not by the Kremlin, but by Prigozhin, military bloggers, and figures like Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, who seems to live on his Telegram channel.
Putin admitted this week that the capital’s air defense had to be improved, but he has never acknowledged that Russia is not capable of fighting in Ukraine and, at the same time, protecting its border.
Added to the president’s inaction is the criticism from Belgorod’s residents of public television for not telling the truth about the border incursion. Propaganda also fails to calm defeatist spirits.
Many accuse him of imitating activity by going on television every day in endless meetings about the state of the economy, industry, transportation or large families.
The Russian leader has always liked to reign in the midst of chaos and infighting between the different clans, but this tactic no longer works when his country is embroiled in a war in which the assault units are mercenaries, convicts and the uncontrollable units Chechen specials.
hawks on the prowl
The inaction has not gone unnoticed by the hawks either. Indeed, the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, did not hesitate to demand this week the imposition of martial law to stop border incursions, a regime that already exists in the four Ukrainian regions occupied by Moscow.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, replied that this decision is the prerogative of the head of state and that this option is not on the table.
The problem is that Prigozhin also supported Kadyrov and called for a second wave of mobilization, which would include some 2 million men, of whom 200,000 should be deployed on the border.
“You have to turn the country into a military monster so that there are more weapons than in North Korea,” he said.
Both also support the reinstatement of the death penalty, which the Kremlin resists as a very unpopular measure, although this punishment is applied in peacetime in neighboring Belarus.
In turn, experts believe that the open confrontation between Prigozhin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu does not strengthen the president’s power, but rather weakens him in the eyes of the Russians.
Noise of sabers
In one of his already famous sermons on YouTube, Igor Girkin, alias “Strelkov”, the leader of the armed uprising in Donbas (2014), predicted that Wagner would lead a rebellion in the coming months that could lead to the overthrow of Putin.
In his opinion, Prigozhin has support among the security forces, otherwise he would have already been eliminated for his rudeness to the Defense Minister.
“A coup attempt has been declared (…) If Prigozhin remains Wagner’s boss, the rebellion will be rapid and radical,” he said, recalling that thousands of Wagnerites are scattered throughout the territory of the European part of Russia.
Prigozhin, who has acknowledged that the Russian military campaign has failed to demilitarize the enemy, began a national tour this week called “Wagner. Second Front” that has already taken him to four cities.
Although he denied political ambitions, he ventured that the war would be long and that defeat would mean going back to the years when, after the fall of the USSR, the West dictated to the Kremlin what it should do.
According to the independent press, the war between the different clans for Putin’s throne has already begun. In that no less bloody contest, whoever is defeated will lose everything