Did Putin really flee Moscow as Wagner forces approached?

Things are taking on a rather surreal tone in Russia today. Just yesterday morning it appeared as if the Russian government was on the brink of being overthrown. Yevgeny Prigozhin was leading his Wagner Group forces on a march toward Moscow. While he kept insisting that his beef was with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, in one of his videos, he ominously claimed, “Soon we will have a new president.” Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin was vowing revenge, accusing him of treason and saying that “inevitably” serious punishment would follow.

Now, barely 24 hours later, it’s almost as if none of this ever happened. The Wagner Group is marching back to the south. Prigozhin is either in Belarus or on his way there. He will remain in that country under a deal worked out between him and Putin by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. And neither he nor his troops will face any charges.

The head of the private Russian military company Wagner will move to neighboring Belarus as part of deal to defuse rebellion tensions and the criminal case against him will be closed, the Kremlin said Saturday.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s troops who joined him in the uprising will not face prosecution and those who did not will be offered contracts by the Defense Ministry, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Prigozhin probably counts himself lucky at this point. Putin’s enemies have had a nasty habit of experiencing sudden defenestration events lately. But Lukashenko seems to be offering him a spot as a permanent guest.

One question still remains unanswered this morning, however. Yesterday morning and afternoon, we saw multiple reports that Vladimir Putin had fled the capital as the Wagner forces approached. But did he really? The Kremlin is denying that it ever happened. They have insisted all along that Putin remained “working” in Moscow as all of this played out.

The Kremlin has denied Vladimir Putin has fled Moscow by plane after claiming Russia is ‘facing treason’ from members of the mutinous Wagner group.

One of several planes that the Russian president uses for official visits took off from Moscow at 2.15pm local time, according to Flight Radar, which tracks aircraft in real-time.

Less than half an hour later, it went off radar about 150 kilometres from Putin’s official residence.

Despite multiple reports emerging saying that Putin had fled to the northwest, I have yet to see a single video showing him leaving. What’s clear is that one of the planes Putin uses did leave Moscow shortly after 2 pm Moscow time. But there were a lot of private jets flying out of Moscow yesterday. Those with the resources to do so were leaving in droves ahead of what was shaping up to potentially be a bloody invasion.

Putin’s presidential plane reportedly took off from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

At the same time, Peskov states that Putin is working in the Kremlin. pic.twitter.com/DE7WZcvMnw

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) June 24, 2023

If Putin really did fly out, you can understand that he would have a tremendous motivation to deny it and try to bury the story. That would have made him look incredibly weak and cowardly. And he would dread comparisons between his actions and those of Ukrainian President Zelensky who famously declared he needed ammunition, “not a ride,” as Russian troops approached Kyiv.

But it’s still possible that Putin is telling the truth. After all, he has several planes that he regularly uses for travel around the country. Is it possible that he may have used that one to send some friends and/or family members to safety while he remained behind? Until someone gets some fresh footage of him in Moscow without that plane returning, we aren’t going to know.

One other detail emerged since our last update that may be of interest. From the beginning, Yevgeny Prigozhin has been indicating this his revolt was mostly spontaneous. He was reacting to what he considered a betrayal by Sergei Shoigu when an encampment of his Wagner forces was shelled by the Russian military. But as it turns out, American intelligence sources have known for some time that Prigozhin was planning a revolt and were quite concerned over the implications that might have for the stability of Russia and its nuclear arsenal. (CNN)

US intelligence officials believe that Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the private Wagner military group, had been planning a major challenge to Russia’s military leadership for quite some time, but it was unclear what the ultimate aim would be, three people familiar with the matter told CNN.

Intelligence officials briefed congressional leaders known as the Gang of Eight earlier this week concerning Wagner group movements and equipment buildups near Russia, two of the people said.

So Prigozhin clearly had a plan in place. Perhaps he was just waiting for a convenient excuse to exercise it and the shelling of his troops (which may indeed have been accidental) was the moment he chose as a justification. But if that’s the case, it only further confirms the idea that Putin is viewed as being significantly weakened now and internal adversaries may be considering their own moves to replace him. As I’ve said here for the past year or more, if Putin does eventually go down, whoever replaces him will probably be worse. The big question is whether or not the next leader would want to continue the war in Ukraine or use the change in command as an excuse to pull out and shut this down.