Blinken on attempted coup in Russia: I don't think this is final episode
Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, believes that the attempted coup of the private military company Wagner indicates "very serious cracks" in the Russian government.
Source: Blinken said this on Sunday on the air of the TV channel ABC, reports European Pravda.
As he noted, the situation with the attempted coup in Russia "is still developing."
"We have Prigozhin, who publicly questions the premise of Russian aggression against Ukraine – the idea that Ukraine or NATO somehow threaten Russia. There is a person who publicly and very openly challenges Putin's power – and very openly," he said.
The head of the State Department stressed that 16 months ago, at the beginning of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, "Putin stood on the threshold of Kyiv in Ukraine, trying to capture the city in a matter of days and wipe the country off the face of the Earth."
"Now he had to defend Moscow, the capital of Russia, from his own mercenary... I don't want to speculate, and I don't think we saw the final episode," Blinken added.
He also confirmed that representatives of the US presidential administration spoke with their Russian counterparts.
"First of all, because we want to ensure that Russia understands its duty to take care of the well-being of American citizens and our personnel in Russia. They are obliged to do this," the Secretary of State explained.
On 23-24 June, an actual military confrontation between the head of the Wagner PMC and the official Russian elite was unfolding in Russia. In a special address, Vladimir Putin talked about the Civil War and rebellion.
On Saturday evening, after a conversation with the self-proclaimed President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin said that his mercenaries turn back, and go in the opposite direction to the field camps. Later, it became known that the criminal case against Prigozhin would be closed, and he would "go to Belarus".
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