Bhasmasura moment as Wagner threatened Russian insurrection
A flicker of global excitement about insurrection in Russia died all too soon after mercenary outfit Wagner group’s mercurial boss Yevgeny Prigozhin ordered his troops barrelling towards Moscow to stand down. What seemed like the biggest armed challenge to decades of President Vladimir Putin’s despotic rule folded up within 24 hours without bloodshed. For months on end, Prigozhin had been ranting against Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu claiming his private army on the Ukrainian war front were being denied supplies of fresh ammunition.
On Saturday, he accused the Russian military of launching missile strikes on his hired guns to justify his revolt. His estimated 25,000-strong army suddenly moved out of its field camps in occupied Ukraine to launch a blitzkrieg, capturing military installations in Russia’s Rostov city, about 1,000 km south of Moscow, and alarmingly taking a motorway towards the national capital, seizing more army bases on the way. Russia hadn’t felt this vulnerable in decades. When Putin’s warning of harsh punishment failed to deter Prigozhin, Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko worked the phones to midwife a peace deal. While its contours are not yet clear, the Wagner boss was said to be headed to Belarus.
Putin can consider himself lucky that the evil he created did not eventually consume him. The Wagner group was raised with his patronage for all the dirty fights abroad to expand the Russian foreign policy objectives—with the fig leaf of deniability. Wagner’s brutality in the Syria and Mali wars, violating ethics and human rights with impunity, has already been well documented. Reminds you of the story of Bhasmasura. Lord Shiva granted the asura a boon to reduce any individual to ashes if the latter were to place his hand on the person’s head.
The asura then got greedy and chased the Maheshwara himself to make him the test case of his new powers. Shiva somehow wriggled out of the sticky situation and so did Putin but it exposed the latter’s vulnerability to a Frankenstein monster. At another level, there is global relief as the Russian nuclear arms stockpile continues to remain in stable hands instead of military rogues. One loose cannon put the world on the brink. He ought to be brought to justice despite the deal that gave him a free pass out of Russia.