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.
Prigozhin spoke out hours after Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was shown on state television Monday at what the Defense Ministry said was the forward command post of Russia’s ‘Zapad’ group of forces in the war zone in Ukraine. The Wagner founder has heaped abuse on Shoigu for months, accusing him of bungling the invasion of Ukraine and of attempting to “destroy” Wagner.
Putin hasn’t been seen since early Saturday when he denounced the revolt as “treason” in a TV address to the nation and threatened “harsh” punishment that never transpired. Instead, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal for Prigozhin to end the revolt in return for Putin allowing him to travel to Belarus and dropping criminal mutiny charges against the Wagner leader and his fighters.
Putin spoke by phone with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who expressed support for the Russian leader’s actions, the Kremlin said in a statement Monday.
Prigozhin didn’t disclose his whereabouts since announcing late Saturday that he was calling off the assault and withdrawing his forces. Video on social media showed crowds cheering him and shaking his hand as he was driven away from a military installation in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don that Wagner had taken over early in the mutiny.
Despite the deal with the Kremlin, Russian news services reported Monday that prosecutors were continuing to investigate Prigozhin and haven’t closed the criminal case against him.
The rapid chain of events has left the U.S., Europe and China puzzling over the political fallout from a rebellion that shattered Putin’s invincible image as Russia’s leader and spiraled into the greatest threat to his nearly quarter-century rule. The crisis highlighted bitter divisions within Russia over the faltering war in Ukraine that’s the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II, as a Ukrainian counteroffensive continues to try to push Putin’s forces out of occupied territories.
There’s “an internal power struggle in Russia and we will not get involved,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters Monday as European Union foreign ministers gathered for a scheduled meeting in Luxembourg. “We are seeing that Russia’s leadership is increasingly fighting within itself.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wagner’s revolt was a “direct challenge” to Putin’s authority and “raises profound questions,” in an interview Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. “We can’t speculate or know exactly where that’s going to go. We do know that Putin has a lot more to answer for in the weeks and months ahead.”
China, which has boosted ties with Putin and refused to join U.S.-led sanctions over the war, said it supports Russia’s actions to maintain national stability. A brief Foreign Ministry statement described the weekend’s events as Moscow’s “internal affair.”
Putin has been “seriously damaged,” former U.K. Ambassador to Moscow Laurie Bristow said in a Bloomberg TV interview Monday in which he compared the Russian state to a tank of piranhas. “As long as the food is coming, the piranhas are happy and when the food stops, the piranhas eat each other up,” he said.
Market reaction to the turmoil was muted. The ruble weakened as much as 3% against the dollar at Monday’s open on the Moscow Exchange, before recovering most of the losses, and wheat futures advanced.
Tensions first erupted Friday when Prigozhin, 62, posted audio messages on Telegram vowing to “punish” the Defense Ministry in Moscow for what he alleged was a missile attack on a Wagner base and the loss of “tens of thousands” of Russian troops in the war. The Defense Ministry denied Prigozhin’s claims about a strike.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin lifted a “counter-terror regime” in the capital on Monday and similar restrictions were lifted in other regions as the authorities strove to restore a sense of normality.
The potential arrival of Prigozhin and his mercenaries in Belarus may create a new threat to the country and the safety of neighboring NATO member states like Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told Bloomberg TV in an interview Monday. He may get involved in training Russian troops or even join another attack on Ukraine from Belarusian territory, she said.
“Prigozhin’s story is not over,” Tsikhanouskaya said. “He will be trying to challenge Putin again, and I don’t want Belarus to get involved.”
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(With assistance from Arne Delfs)
