Wagner Group mercenaries were returning to base yesterday as their leader agreed to go into exile after Russian President Vladimir Putin was forced to accept an amnesty deal.
The agreement appears to end the immediate threat that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private army could storm Moscow, but analysts said Wagner’s revolt had exposed a fragility in Putin’s rule.
Security measures imposed under an “anti-terrorism operation” were still in place in Moscow, and Prigozhin’s exact whereabouts were unclear.
Photo: Reuters
However, his troops had left a military headquarters they had seized in southern Russia, and the governor of Voronezh on their route northward to Moscow said Wagner units were leaving the region and movement restrictions were being lifted.
They had also left the Lipetsk region in Southern Russia, the regional government said.
The long-standing feud between Prigozhin and military top brass over the conduct of the Russian operation in Ukraine boiled over on Saturday when Wagner forces seized the Russian base in Rostov-on-Don and embarked on a long advance toward Moscow.
Photo: AFP
Putin denounced the action as treason and vowed to punish the perpetrators, accusing them of pushing Russia to the brink of civil war, only to then accept a rapidly cobbled-together agreement to avert Moscow’s most serious security crisis in decades.
Within hours of Prigozhin’s about-face, the Kremlin announced he would leave for Belarus and Russia would not prosecute him or Wagner’s members.
It had been a dramatic day, with Putin warning against civil war and Moscow telling locals to stay off the streets.
The tide shifted suddenly when Prigozhin made the stunning announcement that his troops were “turning our columns around and going back to field camps.”
Prigozhin said he understood the importance of the moment and did not want to “spill Russian blood.”
By early yesterday, Wagner had pulled out of Rostov-on-Don, the regional governor said, but before they left dozens of residents were see cheering them and chanting: “Wagner, Wagner.”
Ukraine reveled in the chaos, stepping up its own counteroffensive against Russian forces in the country and mocking Putin’s apparent humiliation.
Analysts also said the deal had exposed weakness in the Russian president’s grip on power.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he had negotiated the truce with Prigozhin. Moscow thanked him, but Lukashenko is usually seen as Putin’s junior partner.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Lukashenko’s direct role in negotiating the truce would be “humiliating to Putin.”
“The Kremlin now faces a deeply unstable equilibrium,” it said.
“The crisis of institutions and trust was not obvious to many in Russia and the West yesterday. Today, it is clear,” independent political analyst Konstantin Kalachev said.
“Yesterday’s call for unity made by representatives of the elites only confirmed this. Behind these is a crisis of institutions and fears for themselves,” he said.
He added that Russian leaders would be concerned by the sight of civilian onlookers applauding Wagner units in Rostov.
“Putin’s position is weakened,” he said. “Putin underestimated Prigozhin... He could have stopped this with a phone call to Prigozhin, but he did not.”
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