Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at the Faith and Freedom Road to Majority conference at the Washington Hilton in Washington on June 24, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump called the conflict between the Russian military and Wagner mercenaries a “big mess” on Saturday.
Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin called for an armed uprising against Russia’s military leaders, after alleging that Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, had ordered an attack, killing some 2,000 Wagner soldiers at their field camps in Ukraine.
Prigozhin’s forces managed to seize Rostov-on-Don, a southern Russian city near the Ukrainian border and home to the headquarters of the Russian Southern Military District, which oversees Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine. Then, Prigozhin ordered his forces to march toward Moscow, a military advancement that he called a “march for justice.”
On Saturday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal, with Prigozhin agreeing to move to Belarus and Moscow dropping criminal charges against him. Prior to the deal, President Vladimir Putin vowed the rebels would face “inevitable punishment.”
“A big mess in Russia, but be careful what you wish for. Next in may be far worse!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account on June 24.
Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the White House in 2024, has said that he would end the war between Ukraine and Russia within 24 hours if elected. Recently, the former president revealed that he told Putin several years ago that there would be “hell to pay” if Russia invaded Ukraine.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary force, speaks in Paraskoviivka, Ukraine, in this still image from an undated video released on March 3, 2023. (Concord Press Service/via Reuters)
In a separate post on Saturday, Trump claimed that President Joe Biden will deal with the situation in Russia in whatever way Chinese leader Xi Jinping wants him to do.
“Remember, Hunter & Joe illegally took large amounts of money from both countries, but China right now is the bigger threat,” Trump said. “China & Russia, until Biden came along, have always been natural enemies, with China wanting large portions of largely unpopulated Russian land to have for their much larger population.”
Trump’s remarks came just days after an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower revealed that Hunter Biden used his father as leverage in a 2017 business deal with a Chinese businessman with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Trump added that the chaos in Russia could present China with an “unthinkable opportunity.”
“This is China’s heretofore unthinkable opportunity, much bigger than Taiwan,” Trump wrote.
China
Weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Putin and Xi met in China and the two leaders improved bilateral ties by announcing that there would be “no limits” to their cooperation.
The two leaders met again in Russia in March, with Xi telling Putin that the two neighbors “are driving changes” that haven’t “happened in 100 years.” Geopolitical analysts have said Xi’s remarks—to which Putin responded by saying he agreed—show that the two leaders are pushing to create a new China-led global order.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping (R) receives U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken prior to their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on June 19, 2023. (Leah Millis/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Gordon Chang, a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, suggested on Saturday that Xi would want more control over the Chinese military after learning about Prigozhin’s armed rebellion.
Xi, to invade Taiwan, “would have to give some admiral or general full operational control over the #Chinese military. #Xi was wary before, and now, seeing #Prigozhin’s rebellion, the Chinese leader will be even more reluctant to cede control. We can deter #China,” Chang wrote via Twitter.
In a separate post on Twitter, Chang added, “#XiJinping, watching events in #Russia, is going to exert even tighter control inside his own country. It would be a good time to leave #China.”
The CCP claims that Taiwan is a part of its territory even though the island has never been under the communist regime’s rule. Internationally, Taiwan is widely recognized as a de facto independent entity, with its own constitution, democratically elected government, and military.
In January, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu warned that China is “more likely” to invade Taiwan in 2027, the year Xi could be seeking his fourth term as Party leader.
However, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chair of the House select committee on China, told Nikkei Asia in an interview earlier this month that an armed conflict could break out between Taiwan and China before 2027.
“I think 2027 might be the end of the window, not the beginning of it,” Gallagher said.
Frank Fang is a Taiwan-based journalist. He covers U.S., China, and Taiwan news. He holds a master's degree in materials science from Tsinghua University in Taiwan.
