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28-06-2023
MOSCOW: As part of a deal brokered by Belarus between Russia and Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin following the recent revolt in Moscow, the rebel leader will leave for Minsk.
As per details, Belarus prepared to welcome rebel Wagner leader into exile on Tuesday as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin sought to shore up his authority by thanking regular troops for averting a civil war.
As Russia announced preparations to disarm Wagner’s mercenaries, Putin’s supporters were insisting his rule was not weakened by the revolt widely seen as the biggest threat to Kremlin authority since he came to power.
Asked whether Putin’s power was diminished by the sight of Wagner’s rebel mercenaries seizing a military HQ, advancing on Moscow and shooting down military aircraft along the way, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said political commentators were getting over-emotional: “We don’t agree.”
Putin himself attempted to portray the dramatic events at the weekend as a victory for the Russian regular military, which he said had shown restraint in not being drawn into fighting with the Wagner force.
“You de facto stopped civil war,” Putin told troops from the defence ministry, National Guard, FSB security service and interior ministry gathered in a Kremlin courtyard to hold a minute’s silence for airmen slain by Wagner.
“In the confrontation with rebels, our comrades-in-arms, pilots, were killed. They did not flinch and honorably fulfilled their orders and their military duty,” Putin said.
Prigozhin, a former Kremlin ally and catering contractor who built Russia’s most powerful private army, has boasted — with some support from news footage — that his men were cheered by civilians during his short-lived revolt.
But Putin insisted that Wagner’s ordinary fighters had seen that “the army and the people were not with them.”
In a separate meeting with defence officials, Putin confirmed that Wagner was wholly funded by the Russian federal budget, despite operating as an independent company, adding that in the past year alone since the assault on Ukraine Moscow had paid the group 86.262 billion rubles (around $1 billion) for salaries. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
