Vladimir Putin has appeared outside the Kremlin to tell members of Russia’s security services that they “essentially prevented a civil war” during Yevgeny Prigozhin’s armed mutiny, as the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, confirmed that the Wagner leader had arrived in his country.
“The people and the army were not on the side of the mutineers,” the president told the assembled heads of Russia’s main domestic security services and the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, whom Prigozhin had sought to oust with his uprising, in the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square.
