Did U.S. intelligence services orchestrate the military actions of the Wagner mercenary group against Putin's regime? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that the United States, or any other countries, were behind the mutiny of Wagner troops led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner private military company, against Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia on June 24, 2023.
The video (archived here) appeared on TikTok on June 26, 2023, with captions (translated into English by Lead Stories staff) that said "Ladislav Vrabel and Wagner case in the Czech Republic." It opened (translated into English by Lead Stories staff):
It is a classic CIA job. The signature is clear. I would not dig deep into it. It´s the work of globalists, the CIA and money ... that they turned mercenaries against Russia and Vladimir Putin. That is what is happening today.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jun 27 06:52:18 2023 UTC)
The person speaking in the video is Ladislav Vrabel, an organizer of the anti-government demonstrations in Prague, Czech Republic, who was given a four-month suspended sentence in April for spreading a threatening message. The municipal court overturned the sentence on June 25, 2023, and the case will be reviewed again by the district court in Prague, according to the CT24, a Czech state television channel.
There is no evidence that the United States played a role in the armed uprising against Putin led by Prigozhin. U.S. intelligence officials suspected that Prigozhin might take military action and briefed senior military and administration representatives on June 21, 2023, a few days before the mutiny started, the New York Times reported. The United States decided to keep the information classified because the officials felt that if they had said anything, Putin would blame them for orchestrating the coup, the newspaper said.
President Joe Biden in his first remarks on the uprising said on June 26, 2023, that he had spoken with key allies to make sure that Putin had "no excuse to blame this on the West or to blame this on NATO." Biden also said the U.S. had made clear that it "was not involved" and that the mutiny "was part of the struggle within the Russian system."
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called the events in Russia "an internal Russian matter." He also said the mutiny showed the weakness of the Russian regime and "how difficult and dangerous" it was for Putin to be reliant on mercenary forces.
Putin, who gave a TV address following Wagner's mutiny on June 26, 2023, blamed the West and Ukraine of wanting "precisely this fratricide" and wanting Russians soldiers to kill each other.
The New York Times reported that the U.S. officials expect that Putin's narrative that the mutiny was a Western plot may well accelerate in coming weeks, also because NATO is convening its annual summit in Lithuania.
