Countdown Has Begun for Putin's End, Ukraine Says

The "countdown has started" for the end of Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime following the Wagner Group rebellion at the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's chief of staff said.

The Russian leader "is an inadequate person who has lost connection with reality," Andriy Yermak, who heads the Ukrainian presidential office, said in remarks quoted by the BBC from Kyiv on Wednesday.

"The world must conclude that it's impossible to have any kind of serious relationship with that country," Yermak said.

On Friday, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, accused Russian military officials of attacking Wagner positions in Ukraine. The private militia has played a crucial role in Moscow's invasion operations, but Prigozhin has been locked in a high-profile and bitter dispute with Russia's Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the country's top soldier, General Valery Gerasimov.

After seizing control of Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia, Wagner fighters started a "march for justice" toward the Russian capital. However, the group abruptly stopped on the way to Moscow.

In a deal reportedly brokered by Minsk, Prigozhin escaped criminal charges and he will now stay in Belarus, a country strongly allied with the Kremlin. Around 10,000 Russian soldiers were assembled around Moscow in anticipation of the Wagner arrival, Belarus' President, Alexander Lukashenko, told the country's state news agency, BelTA.

The armed uprising drew fierce condemnation from Moscow, with Putin vowing that those who organized the rebellion would "answer for it."

The Kremlin downplayed the impact of the mutiny on Russian leadership. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisted during a news conference on Tuesday that these "events have shown how consolidated society is around the president."

But Western officials said it showed fractures in the Russian leadership that could jeopardize Putin's rule.

"We've seen more cracks emerge in the Russian facade," U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, told NBC on Sunday.

"It is too soon to tell exactly where they go, and when they get there," Blinken added. "But certainly, we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead."

U.S. President Joe Biden called the mutiny "part of a struggle within the Russian system," and British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, called the rebellion an "unprecedented challenge to President Putin's authority."

Mykhailo Podolyak, another Ukrainian presidential adviser, said separately on Twitter that the rebellion was a "signal to all global elites" that Ukraine should receive everything it needs to "deal a final blow to Putin's state."

Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat who resigned in protest of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, previously told Newsweek that the mutiny is "another step" on the road to Putin's downfall.

Update 6/28/2023 at 4.55 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.