Russia, 2023 — coup (actor type unspecified) attempt

Event Summary

On 23 to 24 June 2023 Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group mercenary company, launched an armed mutiny against the Russian military leadership, seizing the southern city of Rostov on Don and sending a heavily armed column racing toward Moscow, in the gravest challenge to President Vladimir Putin's authority in his more than two decades in power, before abruptly halting after a deal brokered by Belarus. Prigozhin, a longtime Putin associate whose Wagner forces had played a prominent role in the invasion of Ukraine, had for months feuded bitterly with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the military high command, accusing them of incompetence and of starving his men of ammunition. Claiming the Russian military had attacked his forces, he declared a march for justice, and his fighters crossed into Russia, took control of the military headquarters in Rostov without firing a shot, and drove north toward the capital, downing several Russian aircraft along the way.

Putin, in a furious televised address, denounced the uprising as treason and a stab in the back. But roughly 200 kilometers from Moscow, Prigozhin, after Belarusian president Lukashenko brokered a deal, ordered his men to turn back to avoid bloodshed. He was exiledi to Belarus and, two months later, died when his plane crashed in Russia.