“Our reaction will be forceful, the rebels will be punished,” Putin said in a message to the nation before Prigozhin’s retreat. The businessman accuses the Minister of Defense of lying and attacking his men, but justifies the withdrawal to “stop the bloodshed”
Russia’s war in Ukraine has escalated to a new level. In an unprecedented movement in decades, Russia experienced a rebellion this Saturday, that of the chief of the Wagner mercenaries, Yevgueni Prigozhin, transformed into an attempted military coup that may have lasted only one day. After seizing the official buildings in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don (on the border with Ukraine and an important logistical center for the Kremlin’s war) and launching a column of armored vehicles that were advancing towards Moscow without opposition, as part of his confrontation with the Minister of Defence, Sergei Shoigu, Prigozhin has assured this Saturday afternoon that he is interrupting the road and that his men will retreat to their camps “to avoid bloodshed”.
At the end of a hectic day, the Kremlin announced that it planned to drop all charges against Prigozhin and the men who were part of the riot. And that the Wagner leader, whose whereabouts Putin’s spokesman said he did not know, will be able to take refuge in Belarus.
Withdrawal or not, Prigozhin’s rebellion against the army, transformed into Russia’s first coup attempt in three decades, will leave Vladimir Putin and his regime weakened in the midst of their fighting in Ukraine and the counter-offensive by troops from Kiev.
“The time has come when there may be bloodshed,” Prigozhin has launched. “So understanding full responsibility for the fact that Russian blood will be spilled and we are turning our spine [de blindados] and leaving for the camps according to the plan”, he added in an audio broadcast on one of his Telegram channels.
Behind-the-scenes negotiations with the businessman to stop his barrage against the Kremlin had been going on throughout the day, Western intelligence sources say. Since on Saturday morning, Prigozhin escalated his defiance and his rebellion by seizing the center of the border city of Rostov-on-Don and then ignoring the Russian leader’s warnings to cease.