Russian Defense Minister Appears in ‘Canned’ Video Two Days After Wagner Mutiny

Two days after the end of a dramatic armed mutiny by Wagner Group mercenaries calling for his head, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Monday made his first appearance for the Russian public. 

Shoigu was seen in a video released by the defense ministry peering out the window of a military helicopter with a subordinate, touring defenses and receiving reports at a command post.

The time and date of the footage hasn’t been verified.

Pro-Kremlin military bloggers who examined the footage said it was likely recorded June 23 in the southwestern Belgorod region, near the Ukraine border–before the Wagner rebellion erupted.

“The video of the working trip of the Minister of Defense to the West group of troops is ‘canned,’” the influential Russian Telegram channel Rybar told its 1.2 million followers Monday.

There was no reference in the video to Wagner’s armed weekend march on Moscow – or the fate of its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. 

And there was no public sign of President Vladimir Putin, who on Saturday morning had called the Wagnerites traitors, only to later that day agree to a deal in which Prigozhin laid down his arms in exchange for amnesty and a life of exile in Belarus. 

Prigozhin had called for the sacking of Shoigu and chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, over Russia’s war failures in Ukraine–often in shockingly blunt language.

But the video released Monday and shown widely on Russian state television was a signal that the defense minister was holding on–for now.