WASHINGTON — Russian President Vladimir Putin said the organizers of an armed mutiny last week will be “brought to justice” and that his military would have put down the rebellion anyway.
The Russian president’s comments were his first
since hundreds of Wagner Group mercenaries, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, marched on Moscow in what appeared to be an armed
rebellion against Russia’s military leadership. “This is criminal activity,
which is aimed at weakening the country. This was a colossal threat,” said
Putin in a televised address to the nation.
In exchange for his turning back, a criminal case
against Prigozhin was dropped and he was permitted to leave Russia for Belarus.
Prigozhin was believed to be staying in a hotel in Minsk, Belarus, that did not
have any windows, according to Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The mutiny took the world by surprise and
catapulted a taboo question to center stage across Russia: whether Putin’s grip
on power might not be as ironclad internally as it looks from the outside. After
they took control of the southern city of Rostov on Saturday, Wagner fighters
and hundreds of armored vehicles came within 200 miles of Moscow before
Prigozhin ordered them to turn back.
In his speech, Putin thanked those involved in the
mutiny “who made the only right decision — they did not go to fratricidal
bloodshed, they stopped at the last line.” He then said Wagner Group soldiers
would be permitted to join the Russian army, to leave the country for
neighboring Belarus, as Prigozhin did, or simply “to return to your family and
friends.”
Putin’s decision to grant unilateral clemency to
the Wagner mercenaries seemed out of character to some Russia scholars, coming
as it did from an autocratic ruler who regularly jails civilians for publicly
criticizing his administration.
Prigozhin has said his goal was never to seize political control of the Kremlin and overthrow Putin, but rather to protest a planned dissolution of his Wagner Group, his private army.
He has defended his short-lived mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership in a boastful 11-minute audio
statement, according to Al Jazeera.
Making his first public comments
on June 27 since ending the 24-hour mutiny and agreeing on to withdraw
his private army to camps in Belarus, Prigozhin said in a recording that he had
acted “to prevent the destruction of the Wagner private military company” and
that he did not intend to topple the government in Moscow.
The following are key quotes from Prigozhin’s comments released on the Telegram messaging app in which he explained his motives for his “march on Moscow” but gave no details about his current location or future plans.
On the reasons for his armed incursion into Russia
- “As a
result of intrigues and ill-considered decisions, this unit [Wagner] was
supposed to cease to exist on July 1.”
- “The
council of [Wagner] commanders gathered, which brought all the information
to the fighters, and no one agreed to sign a contract with the [Russian]
ministry of defence, as everyone knows perfectly well… that this would
have led to a complete loss of combat capability.”
- “Experienced
fighters, experienced commanders would simply be smashed and turned into
meat; they would not be able to use their combat potential and combat
experience.”
- “Those
fighters who decided that they were ready to transfer to the Ministry of
Defence did transfer, but this was a small amount of 1-2 percent.”
- “The
decision to transfer [Wagner] to the defence ministry was taken at the
most inopportune moment.”
On the occupation of Russia’s Rostov-on-Don city
- “We
were taking inventory and were going to leave on June 30 in a column to
Rostov and publicly hand over the equipment near the headquarters of the
SVO [acronym for Russia’s ‘Special Military Operation’ in Ukraine] if
there was no solution.”
- “Despite
the fact that we did not show any aggression, a missile strike was
launched on us and immediately after that the helicopters worked on us.
About 30 fighters of the Wagner PMC (private military company) were
killed, some were injured.”
- “This
was the trigger for… the [Wagner] Council of Commanders deciding that we
should start moving immediately.”
On the march to Moscow
- “The
aim was to prevent the destruction of the PMC and to bring to justice
those people who made a huge number of mistakes during their
unprofessional actions. This was demanded by the public, all the
servicemen who saw us during the march supported us.”
- “During
the entire march, which lasted 24 hours, one column went to Rostov; the
other, in the direction of Moscow. During a day, we travelled 780km [484
miles] to within just 200km [124 miles] of Moscow.”
- “Not a
single soldier on the ground was killed. We regret that we had to strike
at aviation but they hurled bombs [at us] and launched missile strikes.”
- “We
blocked all military units and airfields that were in our path.”
- “When we walked past Russian cities on June
23-24, civilians greeted us with Russian flags and with the emblems and
flags of the Wagner PMC. They were all happy when we passed by. Many of
them are still writing words of support and some are disappointed that we
stopped, because in the ‘march of justice’, in addition to our struggle
for existence, they saw support for the fight against bureaucracy and
other ills that exist in our country today.”
- “We started our march because of injustice. On
the way, we didn’t kill a single soldier on the ground. In one day, they
reached a point just 200km from Moscow [and] they took complete control of
the city of Rostov.”
- “We gave a master class on how it should have
been done on February 24, 2022 [when Russia invaded Ukraine]. We did not
have the goal of overthrowing the existing regime and the legally elected
government.”
Why Wagner stopped their march on Moscow
- “We
turned around not to shed the blood of Russian soldiers.”
- “We
stopped at the moment when the first assault detachment, which came to
200km from Moscow, deployed its artillery, did a reconnaissance of the
area and it became obvious that a lot of blood would be shed at that
moment.”
- “Therefore,
we felt that demonstrating what we were going to do was enough.”
- “And our decision to turn around was based on
two important factors. The first factor is that we did not want to shed
Russian blood. The second factor is that we were registering our protest
and not seeking to overthrow the government of the country.”
- “At this time, [Belarusian President]
Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko extended his hand and offered to find
solutions for the further work of the Wagner PMC within a legal
jurisdiction.”
- “Our
‘march of justice’ highlighted a lot of the things we have talked about
before – the most serious security problems throughout the country.”
(CNBC, Al Jazeera, Reuters)
