Wagner Group Launches Armed Mutiny, Posing Biggest Challenge to Putin's Rule

In June 2023, the leader of the Russian private military contractor, the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, publicly broke with the military leadership in Moscow, claiming his forces had seized the key military hub of Rostov-on-Don in Southern Russia and were marching toward Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the action as an "armed rebellion" and a "stab in the back." The mutiny represented the most severe top-down challenge to Putin's decades-long rule.

The crisis was eventually resolved through a deal brokered by Belarusian President Lukashenko: Prigozhin agreed to halt the advance and relocate his fighters to Belarus. For conservatives, the mutiny exposed the fragility and deep instability of the Russian authoritarian system, demonstrating the inherent danger of Putin's reliance on private armies and the severe weakening of his regime's power legitimacy on the global stage.