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What did 26 June 2023 show after Wagner's revolt?
Summary
Two days after the Wagner rebellion ended, the front line and foreign aid pointed in a different direction from the turmoil in Moscow.
What did Ukraine's partners and its army do on 26 June 2023, two days after an armed rebellion inside Russia ended? The day's reports suggest the war went on regardless, while the political fallout in Moscow remained unresolved.
The rebellion's brief course
On 24 June, Yevgeny Prigozhin warned that his Wagner troops would march on Moscow unless Russian military leadership met him for talks. Russian president Vladimir Putin addressed the nation and said a coup d'état attempt was under way. The same day, Wagner withdrew after Prigozhin, Putin and Belarus's president, Alexander Lukashenko, negotiated a deal to end the rebellion.
As described in later accounts, the deal meant that the criminal case against Prigozhin for armed mutiny would be dropped, Wagner would move to field camps, and Prigozhin himself would go to Belarus.
The front line
On 26 June, Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian forces had recaptured the uninhabited village of Rivnopil in Donetsk Oblast. She described it as the ninth settlement retaken in the previous month. The reported gain was small, but it showed Ukrainian forces advancing in the days after the rebellion.
Support from abroad
The same day, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a AU$110 million military aid package for Ukraine. The announcement was one more sign of continuing foreign backing as events in Russia drew international attention.
What the day shows
Taken together, the reports from 26 June describe two separate tracks. In Russia, a dispute between Wagner and the military leadership had been settled by a negotiated deal brokered with Lukashenko's involvement. In Ukraine, the military kept recapturing villages in Donetsk Oblast, and a partner government kept sending aid. The reports from that day do not link the Ukrainian gains or the Australian package to the rebellion, and it would be a stretch to do so. What they do show is that the course of the war on the ground and in allied capitals continued unchanged.
