Yevgeny Prigozhin broke his silence Monday for the first time since leading an armed rebellion, saying he wasn’t trying to oust Vladimir Putin’s government but would keep his Wagner mercenary company going despite official efforts to shut it down.
The march on Moscow by Wagner troops to within 124 miles of the capital on Saturday was a protest aimed at bringing to account those responsible for “enormous mistakes” in Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as to prevent the “destruction” of his mercenary group by officials, Prigozhin said Monday in an 11-minute audio message on his press service’s Telegram channel.
“We did not have the goal of overthrowing the existing regime and the legitimately elected government,” he said, stopping short of openly pledging his loyalty to the Russian president.
