to victory with up to 44 percent of the vote, across ukraine, there s been intense speculation about how events in russia will affect the counteroffensive currently under way. the bbc s mayenijones is in kyiv. like millions of people around the world, ukrainians followed this weekend s events in russia closely. for a brief moment it seemed like president putin s iron grip on russian politics might be coming to an end, but as many people here in kyiv wake up on sunday morning, they still don t know what to make of it all. translation: we hoped things would advance, . that prigozhin will change his mind and join the ukrainians. but money does miracles. he was obviously paid off. he has basically surrendered. translation: for me, both prigozhin and putin are war criminals. they bomb peaceful cities while people are sleeping. for example, yesterday everyone was talking about prigozhin when ukraine was hit by missiles. i m not interested in him. he is a criminal. translation: ev
Well, the last day or so has seen an extraordinary turn of events in russia. the russian president vladimir putin has survived an immediate threat to his power after the leader of the wagner mercenary group agreed to end his mutiny against the russian army. yevgeny prigozhin called off his wagner troops march to moscow late saturday night after negotiatings with putin s ally and belarus s leader, alexander lukashenko. he also agreed to leave russia for belarus, and the kremlin have said it will not pursue punishment against him or his wagnerfighters. but there are many questions that are unanswered about what happened. well, to unpack some of them, i m joined now by a panel of experts. joining me live are vitaly shevchenko, who is from bbc monitoring in the newsroom with me in london. meanwhile, jade mcglynn is a researcher at the war studies department at king s college london.
Meaning in it, frankly, and i think they are probably trying too hard to find meaning. if you wanted to create that threat it would be much easier to move those troops round in smaller numbers, you would probably draw less attention to it, and actually create surprise. there is no surprise if they are very obviously being moved out. that said, there is an issue in belarus, or two issues in belarus, one for ukraine and one for belarus itself. it is potentially a jumping off point for a new front, and i think if ukraine were to break through in the south it s one of the final card is the kremlin potentially holds to commit something from belarus to draw attention to that area, so ukraine cannot ignore it, but also belarusian stability is very fragile indeed, and actually there is need to prop up the regime there. russia has done that with some troops place there, so lukashenko himself is actually looking for support, i think, at this time, because he is pretty fragile, and belarus itself
Of those questions is, was this real? was this possibly a ploy? this question is being asked both by supporters of vladimir putin and his special military operation and opponents of the kremlin, and one reason for that is because, for many years, what has been happening in russia has been shrouded in secrecy, and time and again, what russian media and officials told their audiences in russia, it turned out to be, well, untrue. let s pick up on that ploy potential that you touched on, there, because that s what a lot of our viewers and readers of the website have been asking. could this be employed to redeploy prigozhin and his wagner forces into belarus so they could then potentially have another attempt at a lightning strike on kyiv, which lies to the south of the belarusian border? we know we have seen in recent weeks and months that those
Wagner fighters have been incredibly effective. it took a long time for them to succeed and bakhmut, but they eventually did it. could this be a part of a longer term tactic, do you think? well, it s the most extraordinary way to achieve that outcome. it s the most convoluted possible way, and i think some of the supporters of vladimir putin as this 3d master chess player, which is a reputation i think that has not survived certainly the last 18 months, are trying to argue this is a very complicated way of having a purge and then moving these people to belarus. i mean, you could do it much more secretly and quietly enjoy much less attention to that move in other ways. plus, at the moment, it s completely unclear where the wagner group fighters are actually going. there is no indication they are going to belarus, it s just that that s what prigozhin has been offered. though whether or not he s even gone there is a separate issue, or going there. he is rather disappeared at the moment. s