Putin Faces His Most Serious Threat to Power, Even as Wagner Chief Halts March on Moscow

CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING — In a brief address to the nation, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed not to “allow a civil war,” evoking the Russian Revolution of 1917, while calling the recent moves inside Russia by Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin — and the thousands of mercenaries he leads — a “betrayal from the inside.”

“This was the same kind of blow that Russia felt in 1917 when the country entered World War I, but had victory stolen from it,” Putin said in a televised address, a reference to a century-old revolution that ousted Tsar Nicholas II. “We will not allow this to happen again.”

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