The Russian President described the armed convoy of thousands of Russian soldiers led by Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin as a "mutiny" designed to foment domestic turmoil, and its organizers as plotters who "betrayed their country." Yet in that June 26 speech, Putin did not reveal plans for punishment or retribution. He said that Prigozhin and his men would be free to go into exile in Belarus, Russia's vassal state next door.
This is not the traditional Putin playbook, according to Bill Browder, who would know better than most. The London-based financier has spent more than a decade exposing corruption and human-rights abuses in Russia. Browder has personally faced the ire of the Kremlinwhich declared him a threat to Russian national security in 2005 and he has seen his friends and colleagues jailed and even killed for their activism. One such friend, the prominent Russian journalist and Putin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza, was sentenced in April to 25 years on charges of treason.
Speaking to TIME by phone the day after Putin's address to his country, Browder discussed the aftermath of the failed Wagner rebellion and the future of the man who has led Russia longer than anyone else since Joseph Stalin.
Prigozhin was able to get within 124 miles of Moscow before his forces turned around. Is Putin the omnipotent autocrat observers believed he was?
Esta historia es de la edición July 24, 2023 de Time.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición July 24, 2023 de Time.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Your Toxic Life
An independent lab has made a business of exposing what’s really inside everyday products
A Man in Full, adapted and redacted
Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full is a massive book, in more ways than one. The 742-page social novel about a swaggering Atlanta real estate mogul, which took Wolfe over a decade to write, sold a jaw-dropping 1.4 million hardcover copies after its publication in 1998. The book's themes-money, power, race, masculinity--are just as grand.
Exhibition showcases ancient splendor
A captivating exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco offers a clue to the vibrant Bronze Age cultures that flourished along the Yangtze River more than 2,000 years ago.
Flights of kites
An ancient folk craft tradition floats across time and still soars to new heights in modern times
What does a biopic owe its subject?
AMY WINEHOUSE WROTE SONGS THAT CUT TO THE CORE of heartbreak and sang them in a voice as supple and sturdy as raw silk.
On the road again with Mad Max's mastermind
GEORGE MILLER HAS SPENT MORE THAN 40 YEARS swerving in and out of the post apocalyptic world of Mad Max.
TV'S ENDLESS HOLOCAUST
A surge of World War II dramas fails to connect with the present
NEXT GENERATION LEADERS
11 trailblazers who are challenging the status quo, leading with empathy, and forging solutions for a brighter future
Uranium dreams
The promise of clean nuclear power brings the West to Mongolia
Why the Westminster Dog Show made me appreciate mutts
I SPENT THREE YEARS AMONG DOGS WITH BLOODLINES like British royalty.
