The insurgent mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has officially broken off his march on Moscow. However, the residents of the Russian capital do not yet trust the whole thing.
At first glance, the center of Moscow looks almost unreally normal on Saturday. While the insurgent mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin threatened to march on the Russian capital, people there strolled through the Alexander Garden, right by the Kremlin wall, with coffee in hand and their dog on a leash on Saturday. The sun is shining, the air is a little muggy, and folk music is blaring from the loudspeakers of a nearby shopping center. By this time, Prigozhin’s fighters had already covered half the distance from southern Rostov-on-Don – they had occupied this city of millions in the morning.
Officially, however, Moscow is in emergency mode – even after Prigozhin surprisingly announced the end of his advance in the evening. The anti-terror state of emergency that the authorities have declared for the metropolis with its more than 13 million inhabitants and for the surrounding area continues to apply for the time being. State institutions are under special protection. A checkpoint has been set up on a section of the Moscow ring road – video of which shows soldiers, an infantry fighting vehicle and sandbags.
That was also Moscow on Saturday: Despite the turbulent situation, people are sitting in cafes. (Source: IMAGO/Ilya Pitalev)
And even in the vicinity of the Kremlin, changes are definitely noticeable if you take a closer look. Nothing can be seen of the tanks that rolled through the streets here the night before. But in front of the State Duma, more heavily armed and masked soldiers than usual are patrolling. Barriers are set up everywhere. And last but not least: Red Square has been closed to visitors for a short time. “Now we came here especially,” sighs a woman who is standing with a group of tourists in front of the locked entrance to the world-famous square, which is home to St. Basil’s Cathedral and Lenin’s mausoleum, among other things.
“Hopefully everything calms down again”
A couple who came with their little son are also disappointed. They come from Rostov, says the man – the city of all places where Prigozhin’s men started their uprising and from which numerous people tried to flee in the hours that followed. His little family went on vacation just in time on Friday, says the man and laughs briefly: “How lucky.” Is he afraid of returning in a few weeks? Not particularly, he replies. “Hopefully everything will be calmer by then.”
However, not everyone is so optimistic here. At an ice cream stand right next to the police barrier, three saleswomen in dark red overalls are whispering excitedly to one another. “Shoigu” can be heard once – the last name of the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who Prigozhin has declared a kind of archenemy.
As customers approach, the women immediately fall silent. When asked how they assess the situation, they only answer taciturnly and with a suspicious look. “It’s terrible,” says one. She doesn’t know what to believe, after all, you read so much on social networks. And indeed: the situation is extremely confusing in many respects. As she picks out change for a small bottle of chilled water, the clerk adds, “I don’t know what to do: stay or flee?”
“Afraid the war will come to us”
Young Muscovites, in particular, who consume critical and foreign media, are agitated this weekend, when Moscow was threatened with a storm. “I’m afraid that the war will eventually come to us,” wrote a 26-year-old in a private chat, referring to the war of aggression that Russia has been waging against Ukraine for the past 16 months.
Another young woman says she fears that a state of war could now officially be declared in Russia. She supports neither the Wagner fighters nor the regular Russian army, but in the event of a civil war she clearly hopes that Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin will be defeated, she adds.
A 21-year-old student, on the other hand, writes: “Some people are talking about the beginning of a civil war in Russia. But I think that the real civil war is not taking place on the streets, but in the minds of the people. Either we consciously renounce being an empire – or not. And if not, then even a military coup will not help us.”
