Attention in the
Ukrainian capital has been fixed squarely on the mutiny of the Wagner Group,
its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, and its consequences for Vladimir Putin and the
conduct of the war in Ukraine.
The drama over
the border in Russia has hardened the view in Kyiv that Mr Putin's time as
Russia's president is coming to an end.
"I think
the countdown has started," said Andriy Yermak, President Zelensky's
closest adviser.
At a briefing in
Kyiv, he looked back to the year that Russia first invaded Ukraine, annexing
the Crimean Peninsula.
"What
Ukraine has seen since 2014 has become evident for the entire world," said
Mr Yermak.
"This
[Russia] is a terrorist country whose leader is an inadequate person who has
lost connection with reality. The world must conclude that it's impossible to
have any kind of serious relationship with that country."
Senior Ukrainian
officials who spoke to the BBC here in Kyiv all argued that President Putin
could not ride out a catastrophic loss of authority.
It started, they
said, with his disastrous decision to mount a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in
February last year. The Wagner mutiny, and Mr Prigozhin's denunciation of the
Kremlin's justifications for the war have, they said, removed what remained of
Mr Putin's chances of hanging on.
"The Putin
regime" one of them insisted, "cannot be saved."
It is vital to
remember that anything Ukrainians, especially the ones running the country, say
about their Russian enemies comes in the heat of a fight that they see,
correctly, as a struggle for national survival.
The Ukrainians
have fought a clever media war, and they are remarkably consistent in the
messages that they deliver to their own people and their Western allies, as
well as their enemies in Moscow.
Wishful thinking
must play a part in the assessments they share with journalists.
But it is still
worth spending time getting their views of the crisis that has engulfed the
presidency of their mortal enemy Vladimir Putin.
Without doubt,
he is facing the most serious challenge to his authority since he first became
president in 2000.
Other senior
officials in Kyiv say they are convinced that Mr Putin is opposed by informal
but organised networks of disenchanted insiders.
In his office,
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence
Council, told the BBC that "Prigozhin is not the most senior. They might
become the new political elite".
Mr Danilov said
they included security forces, officials and representatives of Russia's
oligarchs, who believe that Mr Putin's decision to launch a full invasion of
Ukraine in February last year has been a personal disaster for them as well as
a threat to Russia.
Mr Danilov, a
man in his early sixties wearing a black military-style outfit with his surname
on a badge on his chest, bristled for a moment when I asked if he had proof to
back up his analysis.
"I'm not
speculating," he insisted. "We know who these people are, we know
about their lives."
Mykhailo
Podolyak said the Wagner mutiny did not last long enough to influence the
fighting
Mykhailo
Podolyak, another close adviser to President Zelensky, agreed there were
"several groups of people who want to take power in Russia".
The system Mr
Putin built, top-down and authoritarian, was, he claimed, being replaced by a
near vacuum at the centre of power.
Another senior
official, who spoke on condition he was not named, went further, suggesting
that President Putin would be forced to dismiss his Defence Minister Sergei
Shoigu and Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov, perhaps as a response to
another military setback.
Firing the two
men was a key demand of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner mutineers.
"Prigozhin
will get what he wanted," the official predicted. "His political life
is not finished. He won't stay in exile in Belarus."
As for Ukraine's
offensive, Mr Podolyak said the Wagner mutiny did not last long enough to
influence the fighting along a front of 1,800 kilometres, the longest - he said
- in any war since 1945.
It is clear to
the most dispassionate observer of the war that Ukraine is having to fight very
hard, and take casualties in troops and equipment, including the armour
supplied by Nato.
When I asked the
official who wanted to remain anonymous about recent tactical gains in the
east, including a handful of small villages, he lifted his hand with his finger
and thumb pinching the air perhaps half an inch apart.
His message was
that progress has been slow, painful and limited, though he expressed hope that
might change.
Senior
Ukrainians are still doing their best to manage expectations about the summer
offensive. They believe some of their Western allies, as well as supporters in
the media, have become over-excited about Ukraine's army and its Nato
equipment.
Some Ukrainian
officials acknowledged the fear that gives Western leaders sleepless nights,
that a public collapse of President Putin's regime might lead to real danger as
his would-be successors jockey for power in a state with the world's biggest
arsenal of nuclear weapons.
That prospect is
sure to be high on the agenda of the Nato summit, due to meet in Lithuania next
month.
President
Zelensky and his advisers want the summit to give them a firm and unequivocal
path to Nato membership. They believe the best answer to the instability in
Russia is to present an iron wall to Moscow.
But the
uncertainty surrounding President Putin and his regime, almost a year and a
half into a disastrous war and after the Wagner drama, might feed the anxiety
of those Nato countries who would prefer the war to end around the negotiating
table, not on the battlefield.
By Jeremy Bowen || BBC News, Kyiv
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