Russia has shown images of defence minister Sergei Shoigu visiting troops, the first time he has been pictured in public since warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s weekend insurrection against senior military leadership.
The brief video, posted on Monday by the defence ministry, showed Shoigu inspecting a Russian command point and listening to a report from subordinates about the progress of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
It is not clear when or where the video was filmed. Speculation has swirled that Putin had agreed to remove him as part of a deal with Prigozhin to end the uprising, though the Kremlin has denied this.
The defence ministry said Shoigu heard a report about “the current situation, nature of the enemy’s activities and fulfilment of the [army’s] combat tasks in the main tactical directions” from Yevgeny Nikiforov, commander of Russia’s Western Military District.
Shoigu praised the Russian army for its “high effectiveness” and ordered them to “uncover the enemy’s plans and stop them from being realised”.
The video can be seen as an attempt to portray a return to business as usual just two days after Prigozhin’s men marched most of the way to Moscow and killed at least a dozen Russian troops.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Russia was ending its “counter-terrorist operation” in the capital and thanked Muscovites “for their calm and understanding”.
Russia introduced counter-terrorist measures in several regions on Saturday but is now attempting to show that life is going on as normal and its invasion of Ukraine is proceeding as before.
More commonly associated with efforts to quell Islamic insurgencies in the north Caucasus region, the sweeping measures give the FSB, Russia’s main security service, powers to detain any person, seize anything, raid any place and intercept all communications.
Prigozhin and his Wagner paramilitary troops withdrew from southern Russia on Sunday after reaching a deal with the Kremlin to end his armed uprising following the biggest crisis of Vladimir Putin’s presidency.
The normally publicity-obsessed ex-caterer maintained a rare silence after calling an end to his insurrection on Saturday evening. The Kremlin said he would travel to Belarus following an agreement brokered by the country’s leader Alexander Lukashenko.
Prigozhin’s press office told Russian broadcaster RTVI on Sunday afternoon that the warlord “says hi to everyone and will answer questions when he has good [mobile phone] reception”. He had left the city of Rostov-on-Don on Saturday evening, according to video footage released by Russian state news agency RIA, which showed crowds cheering the Wagner Group leader.
Despite the deal with Prigozhin to end the crisis, the mutiny and Putin’s extraordinary response on Saturday, when he likened the threat to the revolution of 1917, have raised serious doubts about the stability of his regime.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a phone call on Sunday with US president Joe Biden who was at his Camp David retreat, said: “Yesterday’s events exposed the weakness of Putin’s regime.”
In a later video address, Zelenskyy said: “The longer Russian aggression continues, the greater degradation it causes in Russia itself.”
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Sunday that the uprising had showed “real cracks” in Putin’s authority. “This raises profound questions . . . We do know that Putin has a lot more to answer for in the weeks and months ahead,” Blinken said.
Blinken called the crisis an “unfolding story”, adding: “I think we are in the midst of a moving picture. We haven’t seen the last act.”