After the short-lived rebellion by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group mercenary army, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin thanked the insurgents for making the “right decision” in halting their advance and offered them contracts to join the forces of the Russian Defense Ministry.
He also stated, in his statement to the nation, that the “armed rebellion would have been suppressed anyway”, without specifying how.
Prigozhin is in Belarus, according to the country’s president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who claims to have convinced Putin not to “destroy” the Wagner Group and its boss, in what could have been the beginning of a Russian civil war.
Others have challenged President Vladimir Putin before, and their end has often been tragic.
With heavy criticism of the Kremlin, Boris Nemtsov was one of the most promising Russian opposition leaders. He had been arrested several times for publicly opposing Putin’s rule, but in 2015 he was shot dead near the Kremlin.
Five men of Chechen nationality were found guilty of the crime and sentenced to more than a decade in prison.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky was once Russia’s richest man, but he crossed the line when he began promoting and defending reforms in Putin’s government and accusing him of corruption.
Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003 on charges of tax fraud and given the maximum sentence for the crime. He alleges that the accusations were politically motivated.
When asked about the case, Putin, who was Russia’s prime minister at the time, said “a thief should be in prison”.
Alexei Navalny, a convinced leader of the Russian opposition, lost consciousness on a flight to Moscow in 2020. He was taken, in a coma, to a hospital in Germany, where medical investigations concluded that Navalny had been poisoned.
He vowed to continue opposing the Russian government and was arrested months later upon his return to the country. Navalny remains in a maximum security prison and could remain in prison for decades if his sentence is extended.
*Posted by Fernanda Pinotti, with input from Erin Burnett of CNN
Source: CNN Brasil
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