Could Yevgeny Prigozhin’s ‘rebellion’ against Russia be just an illusion?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR----THE GUARDIAN

Mon, 3 July 2023 

Photograph: AP

Maybe China’s view that current divisions in Russia are an “illusion” is right (China downplays Wagner rebellion as Russia’s ‘internal affairs’, 26 July). Could we have just witnessed an incredible sleight of hand by the Russian president? What if Yevgeny Prigozhin’s coup was not intended for Russia, but Belarus?

Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his desire to reunify the old USSR. Former member Belarus shares long land borders with other former USSR states, specifically Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. And while Belarus has shown itself to be a reliable Russian ally, Alexander Lukashenko is weak and Belarusian people have shown a preference for closer ties to Europe rather than Russia. With this in mind, it would be no surprise if Putin views the country as unreliable.

However, even if Russia’s forces were not already fully engaged, the invasion of a staunch ally would be hard to justify. So maybe Putin decided that Belarus needed to be brought under Russian control from within. And what better way than to install someone with a private army of at least 25,000 battle-hardened troops, and complete loyalty, into Belarus, ready to take over the country on command?

Having created the fiction that Prigozhin is acting independently and against elements of the Russian establishment and then duping the Belarusian leader into taking him in (Trojan Horse-style), the setup would be complete, with the added beauty that Putin has full deniability in the case of a failure in execution. It would also cast the earlier stationing of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus in a new light.
Anthony Walbran
Dee Why, New South Wales, Australia

• Before we crow too loudly over Putin’s supposed difficulties with the Prigozhin “rebellion”, shouldn’t we at least be alert to the possibility that this whole episode has been a feint to get him and his troops into position in Belarus so that they can attack Kiev from the north, catching Ukraine in a pincer movement? We’ve been caught off-guard before.
Sue Joiner
London