The Kremlin has said that Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin would be sent to Belarus and will not be held accountable for his group’s abortive coup against Vladimir Putin. This follows his surprising order for his soldiers to turn back from their march on Moscow.
According to Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, the allegations of a coup against the mercenary head have been dismissed. He also said that despite the embarrassing issue, there will be no change in Russia’s military leadership.
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While the fighters who did not take part in the rebellion will sign contracts with the Ministry of Defence, Moscow said that Prigozhin’s troops will not be punished in an obvious effort to permanently reduce the power of the dreaded fighting force.
The purpose of the agreement with Wagner was ‘avoiding bloodshed, internal confrontation, and clashes with unpredictable results was the highest goal,’ according to Peskov.
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After a meeting between Prigozhin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, an audio message on Prigozhin’s Telegram stream stated, “We are turning our columns around and going back to field camps.”
Even though his forces were only 200 kilometers (120 miles) from Moscow, Prigozhin declared that he had decided to send them back in order to prevent “shedding Russian blood.”
There was no immediate response from the Kremlin to Prigozhin’s shocking declaration regarding the Kremlin’s response to his demand to remove Sergei Shoigu as defense minister.
Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, claimed to have reached an agreement with Prigozhin, although it is yet unclear what the Wagner executive has been given.
According to Lukashenko’s office, Prigozhin accepted his offer to stop the Wagner group’s advance and take additional measures to defuse the situation, and the proposed agreement includes security guarantees for Wagner forces. Nothing more was provided.
Following their earlier seizure of military headquarters and residential structures in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, Wagner forces—many of whom are still rumored to be unhappy about Prigozhin’s retreat—were later observed fleeing the area.