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 “Russian blood,” in his words.
“Our columns turn around and we return to our camps,” stated.
Since the announcement of the uprising in southwestern Russia on Friday, Wagner’s 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 “Wagner, Wagner!”, 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 “merits at the front” of the paramilitary group, said the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov.
“The main objective was to avoid a bloodbath and clashes with unpredictable results,” 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 Wagner’s boss to stop his advance into Russia. “We are grateful to the President of Belarus for these efforts,” the Kremlin spokesman said.
Progressive return to calm
Prigozhin warned on Friday that he had 25,000 troops determined to go “all the way” and “destroy everything that stands” in his way.
“We are dying for the Russian people, who must be freed from those who bombard the civilian population,” 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 Prigozhin’s “betrayal” and warned of the risk of a “civil war” 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 Wagner’s 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.
“The restrictions imposed today are beginning to be lifted. In the near future, we will reopen access to the region’s roads,” said regional governor Igor Artamonov.
“Prigozhin humiliated Putin”
Amid the turmoil in Russia, kyiv launched offensive maneuvers against Russian forces on the eastern front and made further “advances in all directions,” the Defense Ministry announced.
After assuring that Ukraine was now solely responsible for “the security of the eastern flank of Europe”, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyonce again urged the West to hand over “all necessary weapons”, in particular F-16 fighters.
For Zelensky, Wagner’s coup attempt shows that “the Russian leadership has no control over anything.” “The man from the Kremlin is obviously very scared,” he said.
Despite the withdrawal of the Wagner leader, the Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mikhailo Podoliak, assured on Twitter that “Prigozhin humiliated Putin / the State and demonstrated that there is no longer a legitimate monopoly of violence” in Russia.
-‘No impact’ 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 “out of the question” 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 “capture” Wagner’s rebellion to further an anti-Russian agenda and assured that the mutiny would not prevent it from “achieving its goals” in the Ukraine conflict.
“The special military operation continues. Our military managed to repel the Ukrainian counter-offensive,” he declared.
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