Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin broke his silence for the first time since leading an armed rebellion to insist he had no intention of ousting President Vladimir Putin’s government.
“We did not have the goal of overthrowing the existing regime and the legitimately elected government,” Prigozhin said Monday in an 11-minute audio message on his press service’s Telegram channel. “We didn’t want to spill Russian blood.”
The march on Moscow by Wagner troops to within 200 kilometers (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, he said.
