Wagner’s uprising was not a coup attempt, but a protest: “They were going to dissolve the unit on July 1, 2023 due to plots and bad decisions.” In his first comments since putting an end to his brief rebellion, Wagner’s boss, Evgeny Prigozhin, has said that he called off his advance to avoid spilling Russian blood.

“The purpose of the march was to prevent Wagner’s destruction and bring to justice those who, through their unprofessional actions, made a large number of mistakes during the special military operation,” Prigozhin said in an audio message.

He assures that “he and his men were ready to go to Rostov on June 30 and hand over the military machinery to the military.” But “we were targeted by a missile attack. And then the helicopters followed. About 30 people were killed, Wagner fighters. Some were injured. After this, the council of commanders decided that we had to get going immediately.”

On Saturday, Wagner’s troops seized control of a military base and moved in a convoy to the Russian capital, the most serious challenge to Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power. Full details of how he launched a march that was suddenly called off when an alleged deal was struck that would see Prigozhin go to Belarus is not yet known. He says that he had several wounded and two dead on his side.

The march on Moscow marked a drastic escalation in Prigozhin’s longstanding dispute with the Russian Defense Ministry, which he said today had planned for Wagner to “cease to exist” from July 1. “During the night, we covered 780 kilometers, there were about 200 kilometers to Moscow,” Prigozhin said in his message, despite the fact that there is no evidence that his forces have come so close to the Russian capital.

“Not a single soldier on the ground was killed,” added Prigozhin, who nevertheless admitted that he regretted “having been forced to attack planes.” In his defense he argued that “these planes dropped bombs and launched missile attacks.”

Prigozhin has in the past accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov of not giving his forces ammunition. He also criticized his handling of the invasion. Until Saturday he always defended the official justifications for the military campaign and avoided criticizing Putin himself. But the ‘Wagnerazo’ of June 24 has turned him into a traitor in Russia.

Putin maintains a direct link with the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko. The fate of the mutineer Evgeny Prigozhin may depend on these talks, since in Belarus the hand of the Russian state may well reach.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project