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Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised Russia’s military and security forces involved in countering the Wagner mercenary group mutiny over the weekend to save the country from civil war.
“You defended the constitutional order, lives, security, and freedom of our citizens, saved our motherland from shake-ups, actually stopped a civil war,” Putin told military personnel gathered at the Kremlin’s Sobornaya Square on June 27.
Wagner troops on June 24 took over the southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don and covered some 780 kilometers toward Moscow before abruptly aborting their march some 200 kilometers away from the Russian capital in a move that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said was meant to “prevent shedding Russian blood.”
Wagner aircraft shot down several military aircraft during their march toward Moscow, killing at least 10 pilots.
Putin opened his June 27 meeting with military personnel with a minute of silence to honor the pilots and said they “fulfilled their duties with honor.”
Putin also said that Russian military units and law enforcement officers secured all strategic objectives and the safety of regions close to Ukraine.
The chief of the Russian National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, told journalists shortly after Putin’s meeting with military personnel that Wagner’s “mutiny was prepared and inspired by the West’s special services, because they knew about it and talked about it several weeks before [it happened].”
He did not give any details to back his claim.
Prigozhin had said the aim of his troops’ march toward Moscow was not to overthrow the Russian government, but to highlight the incompetence of Russia’s military leadership in its war against Ukraine.
On June 26, in his first public statement since abandoning the march, Prigozhin said his action was a “master class” on how Russia’s army should have carried out its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, highlighting what he said were multiple holes in military security that allowed his group to easily take control of cities as it proceeded toward Moscow.
Prigozhin did not reveal his current whereabouts, nor did he mention any details of a reported agreement brokered by Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka that is said to have granted him asylum in Belarus.