CNN’s Dana Bash Puts the Big Question Right to Secretary of State Antony Blinken: Could This Be the ‘Beginning of the End’ for Putin?

Secretary of State Antony Blinken assessed that the Wagner paramilitary group’s uprising in Russia creates serious questions about Vladimir Putin’s authority over the country.

Blinken joined CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday to address the fallout from the Wagner Group’s takeover of Rostov-on-Don, and the threat they posed to Putin’s regime before the rebellion was called off and their leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was exiled to Belarus. Blinken acknowledged that the situation remains fluid, but “I think you’ve seen cracks emerge that weren’t there before.”

First, in having Prigozhin raise front and center, questioning the very premises of the Russian aggression against Ukraine to begin with, the argument that somehow Ukraine or NATO posed a threat to Russia, and a direct challenge to Putin himself. So, think about it this way. Sixteen months ago, Russian forces were on the doorstep of Kyiv, Ukraine, thinking they were going to take the city in a matter of days and erase the country from the map. Now they have to be focused on defending Moscow, Russia’s capital, against mercenaries of Putin’s own making. So this raises a lot of profound questions that will be answered I think in the days and weeks ahead.

Prigozhin was a known critic of Russia’s leadership in the military, though the secretary of state wouldn’t say if any of Russia’s top military officers were replaced in order to get Prigozhin to back down. When Bash asked if Blinken thinks this could be “the beginning of the end” for Putin, Blinken refused to speculate outright – though he talked about the uprising in the context of Putin’s reign.

“This is just an added chapter to a very, very bad book that Putin has written for Russia,” Blinkedn said. “But what is so striking is that it is internal. The fact that you have, from within, someone directly questioning Putin’s authority, directly questioning the premises that upon which he launched this aggression against Ukraine. That, in and of itself, is something very powerful, it adds cracks. Where those go, when they get there, too soon to say. But it clearly raises new questions Putin has to deal with.”

Watch above via CNN.