Russia Says Wagner Group’s Leader Will Move to Belarus After His Rebellious March Challenged Putin
The greatest challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power fizzled out relatively peacefully Saturday after the rebellious mercenary commander who ordered his troops to march on Moscow abruptly reached a deal with the Kremlin to go into exile and sounded the retreat.
The dramatic if brief revolt shifted the landscape for the Kremlin and the 16-month-old war in Ukraine and prompted Russia to pull soldiers back from the battlefield to defend the capital, a stunning recognition of the threat posed by Wagner Group soldiers under the command of Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Under the deal announced by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Prigozhin will go to neighboring Belarus and charges of mounting an armed rebellion will be dropped.
The government said it also would not prosecute fighters who took part, while those who did not join in were to be offered contracts by the Defense Ministry.
Putin had vowed earlier to punish those behind the armed uprising led by his onetime protege, whose forces seized a key military facility in southern Russia before advancing on the capital. In a televised speech to the nation, he called the rebellion a “betrayal” and “treason.”
In allowing Prigozhin and his forces to go free, Peskov said, Putin’s “highest goal” was “to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results.”
Moscow had braced for the arrival of the Wagner forces by erecting checkpoints with armored vehicles and troops on the city’s southern edge. Red Square was shut down, and the mayor urged motorists to stay off some roads.
About 3,000 Chechen soldiers were pulled from fighting in Ukraine and rushed there early Saturday, state television in Chechnya reported, signaling the Kremlin’s desperation as the Wagner troops advanced to, according to Prigozhin, just 200 kilometers (120 miles) from Moscow.
But after the deal was struck, Prigozhin announced that he had decided to retreat to avoid “shedding Russian blood.”
His troops were ordered back to their field camps in Ukraine, where they have been fighting alongside Russian regular soldiers.
Prigozhin has demanded the ouster of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, long the target of his withering criticism for his conduct of the war in Ukraine.
On Friday, he accused forces under Shoigu’s command of attacking Wagner camps and killing “a huge number of our comrades.”
Prigozhin did not say whether the Kremlin had responded to his demand. Peskov said the issue could not have been discussed during the negotiations, which were conducted by the president of Belarus, and is the “exclusive prerogative of the commander in chief.”
If Putin were to agree to Shoigu’s ouster, it could be politically damaging for the president after he branded Prigozhin a backstabbing traitor.
Early Saturday, Prigozhin’s private army appeared to control the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a city 660 miles (over 1,000 kilometers) south of Moscow, which runs Russian operations in Ukraine, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said.
A nighttime video from the city posted on Russian messaging app channels showed people cheering Wagner troops as they left Rostov-on-Don. Prigozhin was seen riding in one of the vehicles, and people greeted him and some ran to shake his hand as he lowered the window.
The regional governor later said that all of the troops had left the city.
Source:AP
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