Russian President Vladimir Putin has made his first public address since Saturday, after Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and his forces abandoned their march to Moscow during a short-lived insurrection.
“The armed rebellion would have been suppressed anyway,” Putin said, adding that “civil solidarity showed that any blackmail and attempts to organize an internal mutiny will end in defeat.” The brief address appeared to be pre-recorded from inside the Kremlin, according to Russian state media TASS.
Prigozhin broke his own silence earlier on Monday, saying that the aborted uprising had been a protest rather than an attempt to topple the government.
“The purpose of the march was to prevent the destruction of PMC Wagner and to bring to justice those who, through their unprofessional actions, made a huge number of mistakes during the special military operation,” Prigozhin said in an audio message, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Troops from his private military group seized control of a military base and moved in convoy towards Russia’s capital on Saturday in a remarkable and unexpected challenge to Putin. The march was suddenly called off when a supposed deal was struck that would see Prigozhin move to Belarus.
Wagner’s march toward Moscow not only marked a drastic escalation in Prigozhin’s long-running feud with Russia’s Defense Ministry, but has left an air of uncertainty and more questions for Putin, who is recovering from one of the gravest challenges to his authority in decades. Questions also remain on Prigozhin’s whereabouts and the future of Russia’s war with Ukraine, in which Wagner played a crucial role.
Prigozhin claimed Monday that Russia’s Defense Ministry had planned for Wagner to “cease to exist” from July 1.
“Overnight, we have walked 780 kilometers (480 miles), 200-something kilometers (125 miles) were left to Moscow,” Prigozhin claimed in his Monday message, despite no evidence that Wagner forces made it that close to the Russian capital.
“Not a single soldier on the ground was killed,” Prigozhin added. “We regret that we were forced to strikes on aircraft,” he said. “…but these aircraft dropped bombs and launched missile strikes.”
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko “extended his hand” and offered to find solutions to further the work of the Wagner Group in a legal way, Prigozhin said, mirroring the line that Minsk and the Kremlin has communicated about why the march – which for several hours appeared to be an armed insurrection on the Russian state – suddenly ended.
Prigozhin claimed that residents of Russian towns “were all happy [to see us]” adding that “many of them still write us words of support and some are disappointed that we stopped, because in the march of justice, in addition to our struggle for existence, they saw support for the fight against bureaucracy and other ills that exist in our country today.”
But videos posted to social media show a more nuanced picture.
Wagner forces were met with some cheering in Rostov-on-Don, where on Saturday, local people were taking photos with Wagner fighters, chatting with them, and jubilantly climbing their equipment.
But many of those videos show Russians cheering only after the announcement of the apparent deal brokered by Lukashenko. Videos of the Wagner convoy en route to Moscow only show it sitting on the roadside, and traveling through cities in apparent attempts to bypass blockades and roadblocks – there were no crowds or people that greeted them.
Belarusian state news agency Belta said Lukashenko would soon provide answers to “a lot of questions, planted stories, versions and assumptions,” in a cryptic Telegram post. in apparent reference to queries surrounding Minsk-brokered deal.
Belarusian officials have previously said they cannot confirm if Prigozhin has arrived in the country or what his status will be in Belarus.
Unclear future
The future role of Prigozhin or his Wagner group remains unclear. The unit has been increasingly essential to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
The investigation into the criminal case involving Prigozhin and his alleged involvement in organizing an armed mutiny is still active, Russian state news agency TASS said Monday, citing a source close to the Prosecutor General’s Office.
On Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had told journalists a deal had been reached with Prigozhin and the charges against him for calling for “an armed rebellion” would be dropped, without providing a time frame.
“We stopped at the moment when the detachment, which had approached Moscow, deployed its artillery, made a reconnaissance of the area, and it was obvious that at that moment a lot of blood would be shed. We felt that demonstrating what we were going to do was sufficient,” Prigozhin said Monday.
Russian President Putin has not spoken about the events since a televised address on Saturday, in which he threatened severe punishments against those conducting what he called an “armed rebellion.”
A pre-recorded video of Putin addressing the “International Youth Industrial Forum” from behind a nondescript desk flanked by Russian flags was released by the Kremlin on Monday, but there was no information about when or where the clip was filmed. In the short video, Putin makes no mention of the events of the past weekend, focusing instead on the forum.
Prigozhin had previously accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, of not giving his forces ammunition and was critical of their handling of the conflict, but he always defended the reasoning for the military campaign and steered clear of criticizing Putin himself.
But he crossed these red lines over the weekend. Late on Friday, Prigozhin accused Russia’s military leadership of killing his fighters during a strike on a Wagner camp, which the Russian Defense Ministry has denied.
He also said Moscow invaded Ukraine under false pretenses devised by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and that Russia is actually losing ground on the battlefield.
“When we were told that we were at war with Ukraine, we went and fought. But it turned out that ammunition, weapons, all the money that was allocated is also being stolen, and the bureaucrats are sitting [idly], saving it for themselves, just for the occasion that happened today, when someone [is] marching to Moscow,” Prigozhin said.
What followed was a remarkable 24-hour confrontation that seemingly weakened Putin’s reputation and sowed further discord and infighting in Russia’s military ranks.