A day after the mutiny of the head of the mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Berlin is watching with concern but at the same time coolly and restrained the developments in Russia and the consequences of the uprising that was stopped just before Moscow in order not to end up in “bloodshed”. .

With modest announcements, the chancellery and the foreign minister basically emphasized that the German government is “closely monitoring the events in Russia” by exchanging views with its allies and partners. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that it is difficult to make estimates for the next day about “how unstable Russia will be” and that for Germany it is mainly an “internal dispute”.

“Humiliation of Putin before the international community”

In a more intense tone, however, the statements of the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German parliament, Michael Roth, who said via Twitter that although it is still uncertain about “how much the Russian regime will finally shake”, however “in a cruel dictatorship, the questioning the power of the absolute sovereign amounts to a resounding collapse. This is a humiliation of Putin, before the international community.”

For the co-chairman of the Social Democrats Lars Klingbeil, the Prigozhin mutiny demonstrates that “the struggle for power within the Russian elite is intensifying” and that the Russian people cannot ignore that “the war is now also being waged in Russia, that military conflicts are raging there as well ».

For his part, the head of the European Affairs Committee of the German parliament from the Greens, Anton Hofreiter, speaks of “the biggest internal threat to Putin since the beginning of the war”, while foreseeing an “opportunity for Ukraine”, with the meaning that the interest of the Russian president will de facto turn to the interior of his country.

“Putin’s soldiers abandon the Russian flag. They didn’t want to continue the burning on the Ukrainian front,” German Justice Marco Bussmann from the Liberals said via Twitter, noting that Saturday’s uprising sends an “important message.”