Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the mercenary group Wagner fighting in Ukraine, agreed to end his march towards Moscow after a deal was brokered by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.
New Delhi: Yevgeniy Prighozin, the head of Wagner Group, a private army of mercenaries that have been fighting alongside the regular Russian Army in Ukraine, Saturday called off his paramilitary troops’ insurrectionist march towards Moscow.
Restaurateur-oligarch turned mercenary chief Prigozhin had ordered his troops to leave their positions in Rostov-on-Don near the Ukrainian border and march towards Moscow Friday — a move that has reportedly raised big questions about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on Russia.
Many of the details behind this truncated Wagner insurrection are unclear, but the Kremlin late Saturday thanked Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko for his role in brokering a deal between the Kremlin and Prigozhin.
Under the deal, mediated by Lukashenko, the troops would return to base in return for guarantees for their safety and Prigozhin would move to Belarus, Reuters reported.
Moreover, as part of the deal, the Kremlin announced that Prigozhin and the Wagner forces will no longer face charges of treason for launching and participating in the insurrection, respectively. Those troops who opted to not take part would be awarded contracts with the Russian Defence Ministry, it added.
According to reports, Prigozhin has been fighting with the Russian military leaders for a long time, holding them responsible for his troops’ deaths in eastern Ukraine. He has often said that they did not give his private army enough equipment and that they slowed down progress with red tape while taking credit for Wagner’s achievements.
Prigozhin’s fury seemed to reach a breaking point Friday when he reportedly said that Moscow’s military leaders had bombed Wagner camps and killed many of his forces.
A chaotic weekend ‘without a shot’
While both the Kremlin and the international community have viewed the events since Friday as an “armed insurrection” or “attempted coup” that was called off, Prigozhin called developments a “march for justice”.
Prigozhin has been using his press service channel on the Telegram app to communicate and update on the Russia-Ukraine war, where a lot of the conversation and statements have also taken place.
The insurrection march began in the city of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, around 130 km near the Ukrainian border as Prigozhin reportedly ordered his Wagner troops to leave their positions and march towards Moscow.
According to the BBC, videos showed that Prigozhin’s Wagner Group met “no resistance” when they seized the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, and Prigozhin even boasted that his 25,000 troops captured the city “without firing a shot”.
Instead, Prigozhin did launch verbal attacks on Telegram against Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of general staff Valery Gerasimov, accusing them of committing war crimes against Russian civilians.
“[Shoigu and Gerasimov] should be held responsible for the genocide of the Russian people, the murder of tens of thousands of Russian citizens and the transfer of Russian territories to the enemy. Moreover, the transfer is deliberate, just like the murder of Russian citizens and genocide. Shoigu has genocide on a national basis,” Prigozhin’s channel posted Friday evening.
President Putin was quick to address the nation on the developments Saturday morning. He reportedly labelled the insurrection in no uncertain terms as an “internal betrayal” and “treason” caused by “big ambitions and personal interests”, although he did not name Prigozhin anywhere.
“Any internal mutiny is a deadly threat to our state, to us as a nation. It’s a blow against Russia, against our people. And our actions to defend the fatherland from such a threat will be brutal. Anyone who consciously went on the path of betrayal, who prepared the armed mutiny, went on the path of blackmail and terrorist actions, will be punished inevitably,” Putin said according to a report in Al Jazeera.
Insurrection called off
The Wagner forces headed north from Rostov on the M4 highway, aiming for Moscow. They passed through Voronezh, where a fuel depot was hit by an air strike, but it is unclear if this was related to the insurrection.
The troops turned back when they were 200km away from Moscow after and Prigozhin said that this was their goal for their “march for justice”. He then left Rostov and went to Belarus to meet with Lukashenko.
Putin spoke out quickly against the insurrection, but the Russian military was slow to react, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Citing Russian military bloggers, the ISW said that the Kremlin did not have a clear plan to stop Wagner Group’s “advances”, and only planned to use the National Guard, or Rosgvardia, to protect Moscow.
“Rosgvardia’s founding mission is to protect the internal threats to the security of the Russian government such as an advance on Moscow, and it is notable that Rosgvardia failed to engage even as Wagner captured critical military assets in Rostov-on-Don and destroyed Russian military aircraft,” the ISW added.
The reasons for the insurrection and the deal that Lukashenko made with Prigozhin are still unclear. According to reports, Lukashenko only said that he wanted to avoid bloodshed and that the deal was good for both Prigozhin and Wagner Group.
There is still a lot of speculation about what happened this weekend on Ukraine’s northern and eastern borders, and the ISW said that the deal was a “short-term fix” and dismissed the idea that the Kremlin staged the insurrection, without giving any details about the deal.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine rages on, as two civilians were reportedly killed by Russian attacks in Vuhledar and Kherson. The impact of the insurrection on Belarus’ role in the war and Prigozhin’s Wagner forces is still unknown.
