Putin’s first trip after the Prigozhin rebellion

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Derbent, a city in Dagestan, on Wednesday. Officially, the reason for his visit to the city was a meeting on the development of tourism in Russia.

This is Putin’s first trip after the demand for rebellion by PMC “Wagner” on June 23-24. It is not known whether it was planned before the uprising, or whether it appeared in Putin’s plans after it.

At a meeting on the development of tourism, Putin said that “due to Russophobia, the West has removed itself from the list of tourist destinations for Russians”, which created opportunities for the development of domestic tourism. Despite visa restrictions introduced by a number of EU countries, Russians received hundreds of thousands of tourist Schengen visas last year.

Judging by the official chronicle, he touched on the topic of the rebellion only once, saying that he did not doubt the support of the people of Dagestan. He did not specify what this support meant.

After the meeting, Putin went outside and approached a group of several dozen people, mostly women and children. He shook hands with some of them, and kissed one girl on the cheek.

This is very unusual for the Russian president, especially in recent years, when, according to numerous reports, before meeting Putin, people were quarantined for one to two weeks or communicated with him at a distance that was observed even during “spontaneous” meetings. An exception was Putin’s trip to occupied Mariupol in March of this year, when the Russian president spoke with several residents of the Nevsky district. At the same time, on the video of the meeting, one could hear the cry “It’s all false! It’s all for show!” – this moment was caught on video by the Kremlin press service and on a video distributed by the Russian state agency RIA Novosti. The footage shows that when a shout is heard, those accompanying Putin turn around and make signs with their hands.

• In his speeches after the Wagner PMC rebellion, which essentially ended in a compromise – Yevgeny Prigozhin stopped his march on Moscow in exchange for a guarantee of immunity – Putin constantly emphasizes that the people did not follow the rebels, but supported the authorities. At the same time, numerous videos from Rostov-on-Don, occupied by the PMC on June 24, showed scenes of “fraternization” of local residents with the Wagnerites and Prigozhin’s departure from the city to applause.