Wagner Group troops began on the evening of Saturday, June 24, to leave their positions in Russia on the orders of their leader, Yevgueni Prigojine, who did an about-face after having frontally challenged the authority of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After a day of armed insurrection which saw Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko assume the role of mediator between his Russian counterpart and the tempestuous leader of the paramilitary group, the latter, who had promised the day before “to liberate the Russian people” by launching his troops towards Moscow, eventually backtracked in order to avoid “spilling Russian blood”, in his words. Mr. Prigozhin will leave for Belarus and the charges against him will be dropped, the Kremlin has announced.
“Our columns turn around and we go in the opposite direction, we go back to the camps,” said Wagner’s leader. “It was in the best interest to avoid a bloodbath,” added Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in the evening, welcoming “a resolution without further losses” of the crisis. But, according to an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Mykhailo Podoliak, “Prigozhin humiliated Putin, the state, and showed that there is no longer a monopoly on violence.”
Abandonment of the pursuits and departure for Belarus
Wagner’s troops had approached less than 400 kilometers from Moscow on Saturday, after having seized in the morning the headquarters of the Russian army in Rostov (South-West), the nerve center of operations in Ukraine. After being cheered on by dozens of locals with cries of “Wagner, Wagner!” “, the fighters, with their leader at the head of the convoy, finally left the scene, confirmed overnight, on Telegram, the governor of the region, Vassili Golubev.
Vladimir Putin had directly threatened Evgueni Prigojine with legal proceedings, but the criminal investigation against him will be abandoned and he will be able to go free to Belarus. None of the fighters of the Wagner Group – which plays a key role alongside the Russian army in Ukraine – will also be prosecuted for the coup, according to the Kremlin. “No one will persecute [them], given their merits on the [Ukrainian] front,” Dmitry Peskov said.
If the terms of the agreement with Wagner remain subject to speculation, Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, seems to have played the key role of mediator. According to his services, it was he who proposed to the head of Wagner to stop his advance in Russia. “We are grateful to the President of Belarus for these efforts,” the Kremlin spokesman praised.
“Advances” on the front claimed by Ukraine
Faced with his biggest challenge since coming to power at the end of 1999, President Putin had tried to keep his hand in the face of this unprecedented rebellion, denouncing a “treason” and raising the specter of a “civil war”. At the same time, the Kremlin warned Western countries against any attempt to “take advantage of the internal situation in Russia to achieve their Russophobic goals”. Wagner’s aborted rebellion will “in no way” affect the Russian offensive in Ukraine, his spokesman claimed late in the evening.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Wagner’s coup shows that “the Russian leadership has no control over anything” and that “the Kremlin man is obviously very scared”. The Ukrainian army on Saturday claimed “advances in all directions” on its eastern front, where it claims to have launched new offensives. Asserting that Ukraine was now solely in charge of “the security of Europe’s eastern flank”, Mr. Zelensky again urged the West to deliver “all necessary weapons”, including F-16 fighters. .
Certain exceptional security measures taken in Russia in the face of Wagner’s advance have begun to be lifted, in particular in the region of Lipetsk, south of Moscow, where paramilitaries had entered. “In the near future, we will reopen access to roads in the region,” said regional governor Igor Artamonov.
The mayor of Moscow had called on residents to limit travel in the city, describing the situation as “difficult”, and declared Monday a day off. Travel restrictions have also been imposed in the Russian region of Kaluga, whose regional capital is 180 kilometers south of Moscow.
The crisis in Russia was also closely followed by Western chancelleries. US President Joe Biden spoke on Saturday with the heads of the German and British governments, Olaf Scholz and Rishi Sunak, and with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, who discussed a “possible impact” of this rebellion on the war. in Ukraine. According to the Washington Post and the New York Times, US intelligence services had warned the White House of an impending Wagner uprising in Russia a day before it broke out.
” Stab “
The time therefore now seems to be relative calm between Vladimir Putin and Evgueni Prigojine, after a morning punctuated by virulent statements from the two men. Saturday morning in an address to the nation, Vladimir Putin, in a black suit, with a serious air and a martial tone, attacked without naming him the man who dares to challenge him, accusing “the traitors” and promising to “punish” them.
“It’s a stab in the back of our country and our people,” Putin said. “What we are facing is nothing but betrayal. A betrayal caused by excessive ambitions and self-interests”
Vladimir Putin is “deeply mistaken” and Wagner’s fighters will not “surrender”, retorted his leader, who for several months has been critical of Russian military strategy in Ukraine. “We are patriots. Nobody is going to surrender at the request of the president, the security services or anyone,” he promised, attacking the Russian president for the first time directly.
In several audio messages on Friday, Wagner’s boss claimed that Russian strikes had caused a “very large number of victims” in his ranks and accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of being responsible. These accusations “do not correspond to reality and are a provocation”, retorted the Ministry of Defense.
