Wagner mutiny shows Ukraine invasion was ‘strategic mistake’: NATO chief

NATO head Jens Stoltenberg said the weekend mutiny by mercenary troops in Russia showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a “mistake”.

NATO head Jens Stoltenberg on Monday said the weekend mutiny by mercenary troops in Russia showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine was a "mistake".

"We are monitoring the situation in Russia. The events over the weekend are an internal Russian matter, and yet another demonstration of the big strategic mistake that President Putin made with his illegal annexation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine," Mr. Stoltenberg told reporters.

He spoke while on a visit to Lithuania — which will host next month's NATO summit — a couple of days after the Wagner mercenary group's aborted revolt against the Kremlin.

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German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, who was also in Lithuania on Monday, said the mutiny showed that Russia is an "unstable and unpredictable state".

Meanwhile, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told a meeting of the bloc’s Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg that Wagner’s aborted mutiny shows Moscow’s war in Ukraine is splintering Russian power, while warning of the risk of instability in the nuclear-armed behemoth.

“What has happened during this weekend shows that the war against Ukraine is cracking Russian power and affecting its political system,” Mr. Borrell said.