Vladimir Putin has said that the Russian military leaders prevented an all out “civil war” by persuading mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to abort his armed march on Saturday.
Speaking at the Kremlin on Tuesday, the Russian president told up to 2,500 members of the military and security forces that they had saved the country from chaos.
“You have defended the constitutional order, the lives, security and freedom of our citizens. You have saved our Motherland from upheaval. In fact, you have stopped a civil war.”
He was joined by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, whose dismissal had been one of the mercenaries’ main demands.
Putin also requested a minute of silence to honour Russian military pilots killed in the revolt. The fighters had shot down several aircraft during their run towards Moscow, although they faced no resistance on the ground.
Russia was plunged into crisis on Saturday after Wagner forces left Ukraine and began to move hundreds of miles towards Moscow on a “march for justice”. It followed a bitter, long-running feud between Prigozhin and Russia’s military brass.
Putin said that the mercenary group had been entirely financed by the Russian state, which spent £784m on it between May 2022 and 2023.
He added that Prigozhin had made almost as much during the same period from his food and catering business.
On Monday night, Putin blamed “Russia's enemies” for stoking the rebellion and thanked the mercenaries for not letting the situation deteriorate into “bloodshed”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news briefing on Tuesday the deal ending the mutiny was being implemented, and he had no information on where Prigozhin was.
Under a deal brokered by Lukashenko late on Saturday that ended a mutiny by the Wagner fighters, they were allowed either to join Russia's regular armed forces, move with their leader Prigozhin into exile in Belarus, or simply return to their families.
Lukashenko on Tuesday said that his country would not build any camps for Russia’s mercenary Wagner group.
However, he said that Wagner soldiers would instead be offered abandoned military bases.
In an audio statement issued on Monday evening, Prigozhin said he “didn’t want to overthrow the government” in his first spoken comments since launching the alleged mutiny.
He denied trying to attack the Russian state and said he acted in response to an attack on his force that killed some 30 of his fighters.
