- Lambasts ‘organisers of rebellion’ as traitors
- Prigozhin makes first public appearance since incident
Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s uprising was “doomed to fail”, saying the country showed “unity” in the face of a “treacherous” rebellion.
In an unscheduled late-night televised address late on Monday, a visibly angry Putin said: “Any blackmail or way to bring confusion to Russia is doomed to failure … I made steps to avoid large-scale bloodshed.”
In his first public appearance since Prigozhin abandoned his armed mutiny on Saturday evening, the Russian President thanked Wagner fighters and commanders who he said had stood down to avoid bloodshed.
Without mentioning Prigozhin by name, Putin said the organisers of the rebellion “betrayed their country, their people”, adding that the enemies of Russia “wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other, to kill military personnel and civilians, so that in the end Russia would lose, and our society would split, choke in bloody civil strife”.
He also confirmed reports that Russian pilots were killed during the failed mutiny, paying tribute to the dead. “The courage and self-sacrifice of the fallen heroes-pilots saved Russia from tragic devastating consequences,” he said.
Some Russian Telegram channels monitoring Russia’s military activity, including the blog Rybar with more than a million subscribers, reported on Saturday that 13 Russian pilots were killed during the day-long mutiny when their planes were shot down.
The Russian President appeared to suggest that the Wagner group would still be shut down, saying that the group’s fighters had the choice to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence or relocate to Belarus if they wanted to, as part of a settlement negotiated with the Belarusian Leader, Alexander Lukashenko.
The Kremlin previously said that it guaranteed Prigozhin’s safe passage to Belarus but Putin’s remarks indicated that other Wagner fighters could follow Prigozhin to Belarus.
According to Putin’s presidential address; “The majority of Wagner commanders and fighters are patriots. They were used covertly against their brothers-in-arms”.
Shortly after Putin’s address, the Kremlin released a video showing the Russian President meeting the head of Russia’s main domestic security service, including Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, who Prigozhin vowed to remove during his rebellion.
Putin’s unscheduled appearance came just hours after Prigozhin issued a defiant 11-minute statement in which he defended the Wagner uprising and denied that he had sought to topple the Russian president.
Prigozhin said the rebellion had shown that there were “serious problems with security on the whole territory of our country” and that “society demanded it” because of the failures of Russia’s military leadership in the invasion of Ukraine.
“It was not our goal to overthrow the regime,” Prigozhin said in the voice memo, that was uploaded to his Concord Group’s Telegram page. It was his first statement since 6.30 pm on Saturday when he departed the city of Rostov with his Wagner troops.
“We stopped at that moment when it became clear that much blood would be spilled,” he continued, describing the progress of a military convoy that reached a striking distance of Moscow. “That’s why we believe that the demonstration of what we were planning to do was enough. Our decision to turn back had two factors: we didn’t want to spill Russian blood. Secondly, we marched as a demonstration of our protest.”
In the statement, Prigozhin did not confirm his whereabouts or say if he was planning to move into exile in Belarus. Prigozhin was rumoured to have been spotted at the Green City Hotel in Minsk on Monday, according to the Russian news channel Brief. A receptionist at the hotel contacted by the Guardian said she “could not share any information” about guests.
Prigozhin said his troops would resist being subsumed under the Russian Defence Ministry, would not sign contracts, and that Wagner may even be allowed to continue its operations in Belarus, a development that could increase the threat of an attack in Ukraine’s north.
“Lukashenko extended his hand and offered to find solutions for the further work of [Wagner] in a legal jurisdiction,” he said, without offering more detail. – With The Guardian report
