Western allies will continue to closely watch the historic events unfolding in Russia, after a mutiny led by the head of the Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin quickly escalated and then unraveled over the weekend.

Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko brokered an agreement Saturday, ushering in a calm (for now, at least) between the mercenaries and Moscow, potentially defusing the first serious challenge to the 23-year rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“This is just an added chapter to a very, very bad book that Putin has written for Russia. But what’s so striking about it is, it’s internal,” Antony Blinken told CNN’s Dana Bash. The U.S. secretary of state said he spoke with G-7 ministers and the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell on Saturday to stay in “close coordination” as the situation develops.

Charles Michel, head of the European Council, tweeted that the EU was “closely monitoring the situation” and was “in touch with European leaders and G-7 partners.” He added that “this is clearly an internal Russian issue” and that support for Kyiv remains “unwavering.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the mutiny proved Russia is weak, adding on Twitter that “the longer Russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain, and problems it will have for itself later.”

The coup attempt loomed over today’s meeting of the EU’s national foreign ministers, who have been discussing support for Ukraine in Luxembourg.

Russia everywhere: “What has happened during this weekend shows that the war against Ukraine is cracking Russian power and affecting its political system,” Borrell said at the meeting, per our Suzanne Lynch and Nicolas Camut.

“The monster that Putin created with Wagner is biting him now, the monster is acting against its creator,” Borrell added.

On the docket: The ministers agreed on a €3.5 billion boost to the so-called European Peace Facility, building on an earlier agreement from March. The money won’t all go to Ukraine but also to other places like Africa and the Middle East.

Also at the meeting: Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told EU ministers via video that the developments in Russia clearly demonstrated the weakness of Putin’s regime, Suzanne reports. He called for the provision of necessary military aid, and increased sanctions pressure by the international community to ensure Russia’s defeat.

Separately, Kuleba also called on the U.S. to speed up the training of Ukrainian pilots and technicians as well as the transfer of Western-style aircraft to Ukraine: “Together, all these steps will allow the liberation of all Ukrainian territories,” he said.

Further reading: POLITICO’s Zoya Sheftalovich has a must-read guide to what’s next after the mutiny.

THE WEEK AHEAD

Monday:

Today is the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking — a U.N. effort to strengthen cooperation on ending drug abuse.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg travels to Lithuania to prepare for next month’s summit in Vilnius. He will be accompanied by the chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer.

Tuesday:

Chinese Premier Li Qiang will deliver a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum’s 14th annual meeting, known as “Summer Davos” in June. The prime ministers of Barbados, Mongolian, New Zealand and Vietnam are expected to attend the summit, according to Beijing’s foreign ministry.

Countries across the Middle East including Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia celebrate the first day of Eid al-Adha, one of two major holidays on the Islamic calendar. The celebration commemorates the Quranic tale of Prophet Ibrahim.

The EU’s flagship biodiversity law is heading for a decisive vote in the European Parliament’s environment committee.

Thursday-Friday

EU heads of state and government meet in Brussels for a summit to address topics including Russia’s war in Ukraine and are also expected to discuss the European Economic Security Strategy. Recently unveiled by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the strategy is aimed at potentially banning companies from making sensitive tech in China.

Saturday:

Spain takes over the rotating presidency of Council of the EU for the next six months, guiding policy agendas and debates among national representatives. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has outlined Madrid’s four priorities, which include making Europe less dependent on foreign manufacturers and making the economy greener.

Ukraine peace plans in Denmark

Top politicians from more than a dozen countries — including all G-7 nations, as well as India, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and Saudi Arabia, but not Russia or China — gathered in Copenhagen over the weekend to lay out plans for a future peace in Ukraine and work toward a “peace summit,” according to a senior EU official who spoke to POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook, on condition of anonymity.

Ukraine ‘peace summit’: The aim is to rally an international consensus around the idea of peace for Ukraine, building on the 10-point plan presented by Zelenskyy last year. While no date for the summit has been set, the official said it was most likely to take place “after the summer break.”

Would you kindly join us? Asked how it was possible to plan for peace without the aggressor, Russia, the official said a potential blueprint was the Black Sea grain initiative for moving agricultural goods out of Ukraine’s under-siege ports. This deal had first been discussed by Turkey and the U.N. before Russia came on board.

As for China’s absence, the official said that “several requests” for Beijing’s participation had been extended. “Both the global south countries as well as the G-7 regretted that China did not participate,” the official said, adding that Beijing would be “invited again.”

Mutiny effect: Did the Wagner mutiny lend extra urgency to the gathering? Although leaders were keeping tabs on the events, they stayed focused on the peace plan. “It’s far too early to judge to say in which direction this will go,” said the official.

Black diplomats feel alienated by U.S. State Department

Ambassadors of color are calling on the Biden administration to live up to its commitment to combat deeply-entrenched diversity issues plaguing the U.S. State Department, which have been widely reported by POLITICO and others.

“There will be many people who will be very glad to see me walk out the door Friday, because I have stayed on them. But I have also put in place other people who will stay on them,” said the State Department’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer, Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley on Sunday, as she prepares to retire.

Without naming names, Abercrombie-Winstanley added that the State Department has not flushed out “toxic rock stars,” who have earned a “reputation for not supporting diversity and inclusion [and] … engendering a toxic work environment.”

In March, POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman reported the State Department ended its policy to issue assignment restrictions as a condition of granting security clearance. The policy was perceived as discriminatory as it appeared to disproportionately affect Asian American and Pacific Islanders.

Under the Biden administration, minority members of the foreign service remain underrepresented, and the inequality gap has barely budged since minority staff made up 12.5 percent of employees by the end of the 1980s.

“In 2021 or 2022, the diversity situation in the State Department was worse than it was in 1980,” said Charles Ray, the former U.S. ambassador to Cambodia and Zimbabwe, adding changes were often made with the agency “kicking and screaming all the way.”

The State Department has previously emphasized its desire to maintain a diverse workforce. “The only way to ensure our foreign policy delivers for the American people is to recruit and retain a workforce that truly reflects the American people,” Blinken said in a statement earlier this month, vowing to continue to press the issue after Abercrombie-Winstanley’s departure.

VICTORY FOR GREEK CONSERVATIVES: Greece’s conservatives won big in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, securing an outright majority and a second term as prime minister for Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Far-right parties also made gains, while the left struggled, giving Greece’s parliament its most rightward slant since the restoration of democracy in 1974, per our own Nektaria Stamouli. Mitsotakis’ New Democracy party won 158 seats in the country’s 300-seat parliament, under a new electoral system that awards the winning party 50 bonus seats.

FREE IN SERBIA: Serbia today released three Kosovan police officers who had been detained almost two weeks ago along the border, in a move that could help ease tensions between the former wartime enemies, Suzanne also writes. The officers’ arrest had been condemned by countries like the United States and marked an escalation in a standoff between the two countries, prompted by controversial elections in the north of Kosovo in April. The European Union is leading international efforts to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia, which still considers the former part of its own territory after it declared independence in 2008.

CUTTING OFF COMMS IN BELARUS: The family of imprisoned Belarusian opposition activist Maria Kalesnikava is alleging that authorities have cut off all forms of communication between her and the outside world, as the regime escalates its years-long clampdown on political prisoners.

Kalesnikava was sentenced to 11 years in a Belarusian prison for her role as one of three women leading historic demonstrations against Lukashenko’s widely disputed election victory in2020.

She is one of an estimated 1,500 political dissidents that remain imprisoned, many of whom were jailed during those protests.

Tatsiana Khomich, Maria’s sister and also a political activist, said her family was once able to speak to Maria several times a month, but authorities have since cut off all direct communication, including between Kalesnikava and her family, as well as legal representation.

Khomich told Global Insider in an interview that the last letter she received from her sister was on February 15. “They want to put pressure on her and other political prisoners, to abandon and isolate them,” she added.

Kalesnikava is not alone. Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya — who ran against Lukashenko in 2020 after her husband was arrested — has also said she was cut off from communicating with her spouse for months.

A Belarusian court last week handed lengthy prison terms to an additional 18 participants in the 2020 protests, ranging from 2 to 25 years.

KYIV OFFICIAL SLAMS OBAMA OVER UKRAINE POLICY: Former U.S. President Barack Obama should admit to making critical mistakes in his approach toward Russia, according to an adviser to the Ukrainian president. “The current Russian … regime is a blatant reflection of a specific pre-war ‘Western policy,’'' said the adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, our own Nicolas Camut reports. His comments came after Obama defended his administration’s response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

MOVES

Pascal Smet, a senior Belgian official, resigned after coming under fire for inviting the ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran to Brussels’ Urban Summit earlier this month, along with 14 Iranian officials and two Russian officials.

BRAIN FOOD

Russia is operating an international critical technology supply network with countries not bound by Western sanctions, according to an investigation from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Russian imports from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan of semiconductors and other tech restricted under U.S. and EU sanctions have skyrocketed since the onset of the Russian invasion.

Just How Much Trouble Is Vladimir Putin In?: Fourteen Russia experts share with POLITICO Magazine what we learned about Putin over the past few days, and what the attempted mutiny could mean for Russia and the West.

Shein Is sending influencers to promote Its China factory, writes Helen Holmes from the Daily Beast.

Thanks to editors Emma Anderson and Heidi Vogt, and producer Sophie Gardner.

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