President Vladimir Putin sought to cast the Wagner leader who rose against him as corrupt, even as he said the Kremlin was financing the mercenary’s operations.
As Yevgeny Prigozhin arrived in Belarus in his private jet from St. Petersburg on Tuesday, Putin was detailing more than $3 billion he said Russia had paid from the state budget in the past year for Wagner’s troops and for food supplied by Prigozhin’s Concord catering company for the Russian army fighting in Ukraine.
“I hope that no one stole anything, or, let’s say, stole just a little, in the course of this work,” Putin told a group of soldiers at the Kremlin. “We will of course look into all this.”
