One blogger, Yuri Kotenok, wondered aloud on Telegram on Sunday where the military leadership had disappeared to during the crisis. The main targets of Mr. Prigozhin’s ire — the defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, and the military chief of staff, Vitaly V. Gerasimov — have not been seen or heard from since the rebellion began.
“On the day when this happened, where were you?” he wrote. “Or can you only shoot videos when there is no threat to give the president a show? Come to your senses, this is not a show. The country has been at war for a year now.”
Even as analysts outside Russia suggested the brief revolts had immeasurably damaged the reputation of President Vladimir V. Putin as infallible and invincible, the Russian government media predictably cast the day as an overall win for Moscow.
But a few Russian voices suggested that the problems revealed by the mutiny needed to be addressed.
Moskovsky Komsomolets, a scrappy tabloid, featured the headline “Prigozhin Leaves, Problems Remain: Deep Political Consequences of a Failed Coup.” (Mr. Prigozhin maintained that he was not fomenting a coup, merely trying to force a change of the top military leadership.)
The tabloid suggested that “the highest power in the country” had created the problem by allowing illegal militias to flourish, weakening the state’s monopoly on violence.
Everyone had been puzzled by the impunity with which Mr. Prigozhin had been allowed to criticize the top military brass, the tabloid said. (Independent analysts outside Russia noted that ordinary protesters get lengthy jail terms for similar statements, but that went unmentioned in the state-run outlets.)
“This created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty and trampled down the reputation of the authorities,” wrote Mikhail Rostovsky, a columnist, adding that the mutiny showed to the world that Russia was vulnerable.
“Yevgeny Prigozhin will go to Belarus, but the problems created by him (to be fair: not only by him) will remain,” the columnist said, “Solving them will be oh so difficult.”
Alina Lobzina and Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.
