WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday said the turmoil caused by the unprecedented challenge to the authority of President Vladimir Putin by Wagner fighters may not be over yet and could take weeks or months to play out.
Blinken in a series of television interviews said tensions that led to the aborted mutiny by forces led by Yevgeny Prigozhin had been rising for months and that the turmoil could affect Moscow’s capabilities in Ukraine.
“Our focus is resolutely and relentlessly on Ukraine, making sure that it has what it needs to defend itself and to take back territory that Russia seized,” Blinken told NBC’s “Meet the Press” program.
He told ABC’s “This Week” program: “To the extent that the Russians are distracted and divided it may make their prosecution of aggression against Ukraine more difficult.”
Blinken said neither the United States nor the Russian nuclear posture had changed as a result of the crisis.
(Reporting by David Morgan and Hannah Lang; Editing by Scott Malone, Chizu Nomiyama and Mark Porter)
