On Saturday morning, while walking near the Kremlin in central Moscow, Nina L. Khrushcheva came across a wedding party outside the historic National Hotel.
When she asked if it was possible to continue the celebration in the context of a national crisis, one of the guests replied: “We are not going to cancel it for nothing,” said Ms.me Khrushcheva, international relations expert and descendant of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
Life in Moscow continued in studied calm, even as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the pugnacious leader of the Wagner mercenary group, took control of a key military headquarters in the city of Rostov-on-Don, in southwestern Russia, and began sending convoys of troops and armored vehicles towards the capital before withdrawing. President Vladimir Putin has continued to work in the Kremlin, his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters.
Even before the uprising, authorities were scrambling to bring a sense of normalcy to Moscow as Russia waged a brutal war in Ukraine across the border.
These efforts continued on Saturday. Cinemas and museums were open in the capital, and there was no indication that people were queuing up in supermarkets to stock up.
Still, there were some signs of the crisis. Red Square, just outside the impressive medieval walls of the Kremlin, was closed to the public. A large graduation ceremony planned at the Kremlin Theater has been canceled, as have all major public gatherings in Moscow and other major cities.
Blocked highways and disrupted transport
In Moscow and two other regions between the capital and Rostov-on-Don, the authorities have announced the establishment of a “regime of anti-terrorist operations”, thereby expanding the powers of local law enforcement.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Russian police and military block part of the highway leading to Moscow.
Along this corridor, highways have been blocked and public transport has also been disrupted in some places.
The price of plane tickets between Moscow and neighboring capitals where Russians can travel visa-free has skyrocketed.
In Rostov, where Russian government forces were expected to besiege the city to contain Prigozhin’s forces, some residents lined up to buy gasoline and food, according to 161.ru, local online media. Some supermarkets have moved to limit the amount of basic necessities (salt, sugar, flour, etc.) a customer can buy.
People took pictures of Wagner Group tanks or chatted with its fighters. Irina Alenina, a resident of Rostov-on-Don, wondered what was going on in a local news group on Vkontakte, a social messaging app. “A civil war is starting, or something like that,” replied Alexander Salazov.
PHOTO REUTERS
Wagner Group fighters leave the headquarters of the Southern Military District to return to their base in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia.
State television and newspapers reported the events in real time, abandoning the tradition of broadcasting the ballet on a loop Swan Lake until the current crisis is over.
Memories resurface
Some Russians remember similar crises, including the periodic flare-ups that marked the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
“I remember when I was 5 years old I was going to kindergarten and tanks were shooting at the White House on TV,” Dmitry Dakhin writes on Vkontakte, referring to the bombing of what was at the time the seat of the Congress of People’s Deputies of Russia, in Moscow. “Today, I am 35 years old and something serious is still happening. »
Some of the calm could be attributed to support for Mr Putin. Olga Roudeva, 64, said she believes faith in the Russian leader has made the current situation very different from the turmoil that followed the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.
Tour guide in Voronezh – one of the towns the Wagner group passed through on its way to Moscow on Saturday before Prigozhin said he had ordered them to turn back – Olga Roudeva told us in a telephone interview that at Back then, people were afraid of the unknown. On the other hand, she was about to go out for a walk and her grandchildren had gone swimming in the park. She agreed there were queues outside petrol stations, but suggested that this reflected not so much concern as people’s desire to simply do something in response to the news.
In Moscow, in the exhibition hall of the Manege, very close to the Kremlin walls, it was the last day of an exhibition of works by the nationalist and patriotic painter Vasily Nesterenko, whose theme was the protection that God had long had guaranteed to Russia.
There was a long line to get in, Ms.me Khrushcheva, who listened to the chatter of waiting visitors. “They were discussing our greatness and our patriotism, the fact that God is with us, that the Kremlin will not let us suffer and that nothing bad will happen. »
This article was published in the New York Times.