According to a report, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken instructed US diplomats in a live broadcast to keep quiet about the Wagner mutiny against the Russian military, which was taking place at the time.
Unnamed officials were cited by Axios on Tuesday as saying that State Department employees were instructed by a broadcasting station not to discuss the situation in Russia with anyone.
read more: Wagner mutiny ‘stab in the back’ of Russia: Putin says
According to the report, US diplomats should only respond that the US is monitoring the situation when questioned about the developments in Russia by foreign government officials.
It further stated that “the secretary and his closest staff were handling the situation directly.”
According to the report, the cable, which was sent to every US diplomat in the world, showed how concerned the Biden administration was about the situation in Russia and how crucial it was for the administration to maintain control over both public and private US messaging on the matter.
According to the report’s further citation of the cable, the US did not want to appear to be involved in the crisis in any way.
Blinken claimed in an interview with ABC on Sunday that Wagner’s mutiny was “basically a Russian internal matter.”
The Wagner group, which fought alongside Russia in the conflict in Ukraine and assisted in the capture of the vital city of Bakhmut in May, incited a mutiny on Friday night in opposition to Russia’s military leadership and their management of the war in Ukraine.
The leader of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, allegedly had “strong suspicions” that Russia would be attacked militarily days before he gave the order for his troops to march on Moscow, according to a New York Times report.
To remain silent regarding Prigozhin’s plans, US officials chose. The justification, according to the report, was that if they spoke up, Putin might have accused them of planning a coup.
After negotiations mediated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the mutiny, which lasted less than 24 hours, was put an end to. The negotiation’s goal was to convince Prigozhin to turn his troops back toward Moscow in order to defuse the situation and prevent casualties.
Later, the Kremlin declared that Prigozhin’s charges had been dropped and that he was free to leave the nation.
According to a statement from the FSB, “the criminal case open over the armed uprising by the private military company Wagner has been closed.” Russian news agencies reported this.
