From our correspondent in Moscow
Visible presence of the police, at crossroads and in the Moscow metro, sensitive points surrounded and official buildings protected by security cordons…, as Gilbert Bécaud once sang, “Red Square was empty”, this Saturday morning , made inaccessible to visitors who usually flock there on weekends.
If the Russian capital has nothing in its appearance of a city under siege, certain “anti-terrorist measures” announced early in the morning by the mayor Sergei Sobyanin, following the rebellion of the paramilitary group Wagner, were nevertheless visible. The “anti-terrorist operation regime” put in place provides in particular for an “interruption of communications, if necessary” and a “cancellation of mass demonstrations”, according to Sergei Sobyanin’s press release. He claims that “all municipal services are functioning normally” and thanks Muscovites for their “calm” and “understanding”.
Unlike Rostov-le-Don, which was partially under the control of the “rebel” forces of the Wagner group, the inhabitants of the capital were not officially called to “stay at home”. “Calm”, therefore, among the metro travelers absorbed by their mobile phones. But palpable concern, all the same, among friends and relatives when they, like many Muscovites, had lived until now as if the war were far away. Humor, as it should be, is not absent, even in such circumstances: it is the return of Swan Lake, excerpts of which flourish on Telegram. During the August 1991 putsch, television interrupted its programs to broadcast Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet, which then became a symbol of the news blackout.
“We have already experienced all that”, sighs a Muscovite, without however hiding her concern in the face of this new “leap into the unknown” which threatens the country already engaged in the war in Ukraine. The currency is collapsing. In town, the ruble was trading on Saturday at 120 rubles for one euro, against 90 the day before. Other videos show armored vehicles parked along the road leading to Vnukovo airport, while a column of police trucks on an avenue in Sokolniki, north of Moscow, blare all sirens.
Significantly, even before Vladimir Putin spoke on television to condemn “a stab in the back of the Russian people” – without naming Yevgeny Prigojine and his group of mercenaries by name – recruitment posters of the Wagner group were removed from billboards, which are numerous in the outlying districts of the capital. The effect, possibly, of the opening in the night of a “criminal investigation in connection with the attempt to organize an armed mutiny”.
On social networks, still, some Internet users distill their advice: “Limit travel and agitation. (…) If you intend to move around town, be particularly careful: do so without camouflage clothing, without briefcases or backpacks, in short, without anything that can attract attention”. And this mysterious guardian angel, – @bitkogan-, concluded on Telegram: “My friends, the evolution of the situation can be very unpredictable. However, “this too shall pass”. We must act today so as not to have to blush later, first of all towards ourselves…”