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- Putin "just hid" during Wagner's mutiny, a former Russian colonel told The Washington Post.
- Chaos in Russian leadership left local authorities without direction during Prigozhin's rebellion.
- Putin knew of the rebellion days before it happened and didn't act, Western officials have said.
Before and during Wagner Group's chaotic armed mutiny, President Vladimir Putin was far from the leader Russian elites expected him to be. "He just hid," Gennady Gudkov, a former colonel in the Russian security services who is now an opposition politician in exile, told The Washington Post.
Gudkov told the Post that Putin's inaction during Yevgeny Prigozhin's 24-hour rebellion severely damaged his reputation with top Russian officials.
"Putin showed himself to be a person who is not able to make serious, important and quick decisions in critical situations," he said, adding, "This was not understood by most of the Russian population. But it was very well understood by Putin's elite. He is no longer the guarantor of their security and the preservation of the system."
It's the latest criticism of Putin after the Wagner plot last month left the world stunned. Prigozhin launched an armed revolt he called a "march for justice" on June 24 after claiming that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had ordered an air strike on Wagner forces fighting in Ukraine, although Prigozhin had little evidence to back up such a claim.
Prigozhin's forces marched through local territories, where authorities were directionless on how to address the Wagner mutineers, the Post said. Putin and the Kremlin hadn't given them any sort of guidance, leaving border guards and local governments in disarray.
Prigozhin, now exiled in Belarus with some of his Wagner mercenaries after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal to get Wagner to standdown in return for guarantees of their safety, had publicly and unsparingly criticized Russian military leadership over Ukraine.
He still is, according to new video footage from his camp in Belarus.
And while many of Putin's opponents and Kremlin critics have wound up dead, imprisoned, or exiled like Gudkov, for far less than an armed revolt, Prigozhin — who earned the nickname "Putin's Chef" after the Russian leader began eating at his restaurants and the government favored his catering business with lucrative contracts — still remains at-large with his Wagner Group.
That's left Putin appearing weak. One senior Moscow financier connected to Russian intel told the Post: "Russia is a country of mafia rules. And Putin made an unforgivable mistake. He lost his reputation as the toughest man in town."