Wagner Group commander Yevgeny Prigozhin halted his troops’ mutinous march on Moscow Saturday, ending a stunning rebellion that posed the most serious threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his 23 years of dictatorial rule.
The coup attempt by the 25,000-member strong mercenary army — which has been fighting alongside Russian soldiers in Ukraine since the invasion began last year — lasted just 20 hours, but sent reverberations around the globe.
“We are turning our columns around and going back in the other direction toward our field camps, in accordance with the plan,” Prigozhin said in a message on Telegram – indicating that his troops would return to the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, where they had been fighting prior to the uprising.
“In 24 hours, we got to within 200 kilometers of Moscow,” Prigozhin said. “In this time we did not spill a single drop of our fighters’ blood. Now the moment has come when blood could be spilled.”
As part of the deal, brokered by President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Russia will not pursue a criminal case against Prigozhin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov announced – but the 62-year-old Wagner Group leader will go to Belarus, rather than return to the fighting in Ukraine, he said.
Wagner fighters who followed Prigozhin in his uprising will not be prosecuted, given their “service at the front,” Peskov said – and those fighters who did not participate can join the Russian Ministry of Defense.
“Prigozhin has agreed to stop the march towards Moscow and take further steps to de-escalate the situation,” Lukashenko’s press office said, adding that the deal included “security guarantees for Wagner PMC’s fighters.”
Experts told The Post that the deal was not unexpected – but that the crisis revealed widening cracks in Putin’s vise-grip on Russia.
Everything to know about the Wagner Group's attack on Russia
Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenary fighting force will not face charges and will instead be exiled despite leading an armed insurrection against Moscow on Saturday, the Kremlin said.
Prigozhin, owner and founder of the mercenary organization, called for an armed rebellion and threatened to rush Moscow in order to oust the official whom he accused of ordering the bombing of his war camps in Ukraine.
However, Prigozhin eventually agreed to halt the Wagner Group’s advance on Moscow just 120 miles from the capital after a day-long negotiation the mercenary leader had with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who was given permission to broker a deal with Progozhin by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s presidential plane left Moscow early Saturday, sparking rumors that he had fled the Russian capital as the Wagner Group’s forces advanced on the city.
The president’s aircraft was spotted on flight radar flying northwest from Moscow to the St. Petersburg area — but then disappeared from the system near the city of Tver, the BBC reported, where Putin owns a large rural retreat.
Prigozhin’s troops “would have faced massive casualties from Putin’s forces, who have absolute superiority in the air,” said John Ullyot, a former Marine Corps intelligence officer and Trump-era National Security Council spokesman.
Ezra Cohen, a former Undersecretary of Defense for intelligence and a Hudson Institute fellow, warned that the mutiny could be the first of many in the Motherland.
“Any time you have this sort of instability in a nuclear-armed power there are concerns about the potential of a loose nuclear weapon,” Cohen added. “This must be unsettling for [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping].”
Wagner Group fighters occupying the city of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia were seen packing up their weapons and belongings soon after Prigozhin called off the assault on Moscow.
Russian media showed video of the troops loading their arms and other supplies onto white vans in Rostov, as local supporters chanted the group’s name — just hours after the fighters had been seen patrolling and taking selfies with residents on the streets.
Earlier Saturday, the departure of Putin’s presidential plane from Moscow sparked rumors that he had fled the Russian capital as the Wagner Group’s mercenary forces advanced.
The president’s aircraft was spotted on flight radar flying northwest from Moscow to the St Petersburg area — but then disappeared from the system near the city of Tver, the BBC reported, where Putin owns a large rural retreat.
Peskov denied that his boss had turned tail amid the crisis, telling news agency TASS that he was “working in the Kremlin.”
But Igor Artamonov, the governor of the Russian region of Lipetsk just south of Moscow, confirmed that a military column carrying Wagner Group men and materiel was on the move through the village of Krasnoye, about 250 miles from the capital, and heading north, according to CNN. Meanwhile, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said his forces would come to help Russia put down the mutiny.
It was a clash of Russian titans as Prigozhin, a onetime Putin ally, sent his hardened private militia fighters to seize control of Rostov-on-Don, a city of nearly a million people on the Ukraine border that serves as the logistical hub for Russia’s entire invasion force, then moved rapidly north through western Russia.
Previously, Wagner forces had moved through Voronezh, about 385 miles from Moscow, according to multiple reports.
Scenes that could have been out of a video game erupted as Russian military helicopters took aim at a convoy of rebel mercenaries moving through Voronezh.
The Wagner forces included troop carriers and at least one tank on a flatbed truck.
In Moscow, Red Square was blocked off by metal barriers and an increased security presence was seen on the streets as sandbags blocked key arteries.
Videos showed Russian officials tearing up a road leading into Moscow in a last-minute bid to slow the troops’ advance, the BBC reported.
Clips shared on Twitter showed increasing violence, such as a strike on what appeared to be an insurgent convoy heading for Moscow on the M-4 highway.
In other developments:
– US intelligence officials said that Prigozhin had been planning a major challenge to the Kremlin’s military leadership for some time, stockpiling weapons and ammunition in Wagner Group depots near the Russian border while complaining of a faux ammunition shortage.
– Ukraine capitalized on the chaos in the Kremlin by launching multiple simultaneous counterattacks against several Russian fronts along the eastern border, Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said, claiming to make “progress in all directions.”
– About 4 billion rubles — or $47 million — was uncovered Saturday during a search of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s office at the Hotel Trezzini in St. Petersburg, CNN reported. Prigozhin later confirmed he kept the cash on hand for militia salaries, as well as compensation for the families of slain fighters.
– Banners and billboards touting recruitment for the Wagner Group were taken down in Moscow and St. Petersburg, videos showed.
Putin compared Prigozhin’s show of force to the Bolshevik revolution and Russia’s civil war that began a little over 100 years ago.
“Excessive ambitions and vested interests have led to treason,” Putin said in a televised address, comparing the insurrection at a time of war abroad to Russia’s revolution and civil war unleashed during World War I.
Prigozhin, who has long criticized Russian military brass for how it’s handled the war, clapped right back at Putin.
“Regarding the betrayal of the Motherland, the president is deeply mistaken,” Prigozhin said in an audio message Saturday. “We’re patriots of our Motherland. We fought and we are fighting, all fighters of PMC Wagner. And no one is going to surrender to the demands of the President, FSB, or anyone else. Because we don’t want the country to live further in corruption, lies, and bureaucracy.”
Earlier, Prigozhin accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of ordering a rocket strike against Wagner’s war camp in Ukraine, killing 2,000 of his soldiers in a number of video and audio recordings posted online Friday.
In response, Prigozhin said his forces would punish Shoigu, urging Russian forces not to resist and threatening to “destroy” anyone who tries to stop them.
“Those who destroyed our lads, who destroyed the lives of many tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, will be punished. I ask that no one offer resistance…” he said in a recording of one of his notorious tirades.
“There are 25,000 of us, and we are going to figure out why chaos is happening in the country,” he said.