EFE
paramilitary group forces Wagner They began to withdraw in Russia this Saturday by order of their leader, who unexpectedly announced his withdrawal after challenging the authority of Vladimir Putin, while kyiv claimed advances in eastern Ukraine.
The volatile Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had vowed to liberate the Russian people by leading his troops to Moscow, finally backed down to avoid spilling âRussian blood,â in his words.
âOur columns turn around and we return to our camps,â stated.
Since the announcement of the uprising in southwestern Russia on Friday, Wagnerâs men have reached three Russian regions (Rostov, Voronej and Lipetsk) and stayed within 400 kilometers of the capital.
Hailed by dozens of Rostov residents with shouts of âWagner, Wagner!â, the fighters began to leave the area on Saturday night, according to AFP reporters present, and after midnight they had completely left the area, he said. the regional governor, Vasily Golubev.
According to the agreement reached, Prigozhin will be able to go to Belarus and avoid being prosecuted in Russia, like his fighters, taking into account the Ukrainian âmerits at the frontâ of the paramilitary group, said the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov.
âThe main objective was to avoid a bloodbath and clashes with unpredictable results,â Peskov noted.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin and who has known Prigozhin himself for more than two decades, appears to have played a key mediating role.
According to Minsk, it was he who proposed to Wagnerâs boss to stop his advance into Russia. âWe are grateful to the President of Belarus for these efforts,â the Kremlin spokesman said.
Progressive return to calm
Prigozhin warned on Friday that he had 25,000 troops determined to go âall the wayâ and âdestroy everything that standsâ in his way.
âWe are dying for the Russian people, who must be freed from those who bombard the civilian population,â he said, referring to the prominent role of mercenaries in major battles in Ukraine.
Faced with his biggest challenge since coming to power in 1999, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to maintain control. In the previous hours he had condemned Prigozhinâs âbetrayalâ and warned of the risk of a âcivil warâ in the midst of the conflict with Ukraine.
Following the announcement of the withdrawal, some of the exceptional security measures taken in Russia in the face of Wagnerâs advance began to be lifted, particularly in the Lipetsk region, south of the capital, through which the paramilitaries had entered, in Moscow, and in the Russian region of Kaluga, the regional capital of which is located 180 km south of Moscow.
âThe restrictions imposed today are beginning to be lifted. In the near future, we will reopen access to the regionâs roads,â said regional governor Igor Artamonov.
âPrigozhin humiliated Putinâ
Amid the turmoil in Russia, kyiv launched offensive maneuvers against Russian forces on the eastern front and made further âadvances in all directions,â the Defense Ministry announced.
After assuring that Ukraine was now solely responsible for âthe security of the eastern flank of Europeâ, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyonce again urged the West to hand over âall necessary weaponsâ, in particular F-16 fighters.
For Zelensky, Wagnerâs coup attempt shows that âthe Russian leadership has no control over anything.â âThe man from the Kremlin is obviously very scared,â he said.
Despite the withdrawal of the Wagner leader, the Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mikhailo Podoliak, assured on Twitter that âPrigozhin humiliated Putin / the State and demonstrated that there is no longer a legitimate monopoly of violenceâ in Russia.
-âNo impactâ on Ukrainian offensive-
The Russian army, for its part, announced that in the last 24 hours it had repelled nine attacks in southern and eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin said it was âout of the questionâ that the foiled Wagner militia mutiny would affect the military offensive in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said on Saturday.
Russia has already warned Western powers against any attempt to âcaptureâ Wagnerâs rebellion to further an anti-Russian agenda and assured that the mutiny would not prevent it from âachieving its goalsâ in the Ukraine conflict.
âThe special military operation continues. Our military managed to repel the Ukrainian counter-offensive,â he declared.
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