Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Wagner Group rebellion last month shows Russian President Vladimir Putin is “weak” and unable to defend his country, saying the security situation in Russia was “crumbling.”
In a Sunday interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett in Ukraine, Zelensky said Putin’s reaction to the attempted insurrection shows he “doesn’t control everything” in Russia.
“Wagner’s moving deep into Russia and taking certain regions show how easy it is to do,” the Ukrainian leader said. “Putin doesn’t control the situation in the regions, he doesn’t control the security situation. All of us understand his whole army is in Ukraine.”
Zelensky has repeatedly said the Wagner rebellion is a good sign for Ukraine.
When news first broke of Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march, Zelensky quickly asserted “everyone who chooses the path of evil destroys himself,” joining other Ukrainian officials online in assessing that Russia was exposed as fragile by the rebellion.
At a news conference Saturday, he also said the insurrection “greatly affected Russian power on the battlefield,” according to CNN.
Ukraine is hoping to capitalize on the battlefield from the aborted rebellion.
Kyiv is amid a major counteroffensive in the east, where forces hope to push Russian troops out of its occupied territories in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. Ukrainian troops are still moving slowly through entrenched Russian lines.
The uprising in Russia last month saw Prigozhin march on Moscow with thousands of mercenary troops behind his back.
Prigozhin halted his advance after reaching a deal with Putin that Belarusian leader Aleksander Lukashenko brokered.
Terrorism charges were dropped in exchange for safety guarantees for Prigozhin, who is now exiled in Belarus with the future of his mercenary group uncertain.
Putin is moving to crack down on the military, interviewing soldiers and officers to assess how much support Prigozhin may have had in the armed forces.
Zelensky told CNN on Sunday that Putin does not control the entire military, especially the “middle layer” and the “lower rank” of the armed forces.
“All that vertical of power he used to have,” he said, “is just crumbling down.”