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26-06-2023
MOSCOW: For one long June night and a day, Russia’s notorious mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin staged an apparent insurrection, sending an armoured convoy towards Moscow and raising questions about Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.
The Russian president even accused his former ally of treason, embarking on an armed rebellion and “a stab in the back of our country” but by the end of Saturday, Prigozhin had called the whole thing off and ordered his men back to base.
“In 24 hours we got to within 200km (124 miles) of Moscow. In this time we did not spill a single drop of our fighters’ blood,” he announced.
Twenty-four hours of mayhem, and so much we don’t know.
Prigozhin was adamant this was “a march for justice”, not a coup. Whatever it was, it came to an end very fast.
For months he has played a vital role in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, recruiting thousands to his Wagner mercenary group, especially from Russian jails.
He has long been in a public feud with the military chiefs running the war, but that turned into open revolt as they sought to bring his forces under their command structure by 1 July.
Wagner fighters crossed from occupied eastern Ukraine into the big southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, then moved up the main motorway via Voronezh, en route to Moscow.
It felt like a defining moment in Russia’s 16-month full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But as the Wagner convoy headed north, there came news of a deal, bizarrely brokered by Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko.
Few believe the story is as simple as that, but if the Kremlin is right this may be the end of Prigozhin’s role in the war and in Russia itself.
He is heading to Belarus and will not face criminal charges, says the Kremlin. His fighters have been promised an amnesty. Was it entirely bloodless? That is unclear as at least one military helicopter was shot down and where this leaves Vladimir Putin is another matter. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
