The Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has reappeared for the first time since abandoning his armed mutiny on Saturday evening, issuing a defiant 11-minute statement in which he defended the Wagner uprising and said that “society demanded it.”
In the statement, Prigozhin denied that Wagner sought to topple Putin and said that the uprising had shown that there were “serious problems with security on the whole territory of our country.”
“It was not our goal to overthrow the regime,” Prigozhin said in the voice memo, which was uploaded to his Concord Group’s Telegram page.
“We stopped at that moment, when it became clear that much blood would be spilled,” he continued, describing the progress of a military convoy that reached striking distance of Moscow. “That’s why we believe that the demonstration of what we were planning to do was enough. Our decision to turn back had two factors: we didn’t want to spill Russian blood. Secondly, we marched as a demonstration of our protest.”
In the statement, Prigozhin did not confirm his whereabouts or say if he was planning to move into exile in Belarus as part of a settlement negotiated with the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. Prigozhin was rumoured to have been spotted at the Green City Hotel in Minsk on Monday, according to the Russian news channel BRIEF. A receptionist at the hotel contacted by the Guardian said she “could not share any information” about guests.
In the statement, Prigozhin said that his troops would resist being reformed under the Russian defence ministry, would not sign contracts, and that he may even be allowed to continue his operations in Belarus, a development that could
He once again accused the Russian defence ministry of targeting his troops with artillery fire, calling it the “trigger for us to move out immediately.”
“The goal of the march was to not allow the destruction of the Wagner private military company and hold to account the officials who through their unprofessional actions have committed a massive number of errors. Society demanded it.”
Prigozhin acknowledged that his troops had killed Russian airmen during their uprising, saying they “regretted that they were required to carry out strikes against aircraft but they were hitting our forces with bombs and rocket strikes.”
He also claimed that the troops movement into Russia was a “master. class” in how Russia should have carried out its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, which failed to achieve its goal of taking Kyiv.
Russia has faced “a challenge to its stability” and must remain united behind Vladimir Putin, the country’s prime minister said in the aftermath of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny.
“The consolidation of the whole of society is especially important; we need to act together, as one team, and maintain the unity of all forces, rallying around the president,” Mikhail Mishustin said at a televised government meeting.
The former head of Russia’s federal tax service, a technocrat who was appointed PM in 2020, also took a swipe at the west. “As the president noted, virtually the entire military, economic, information machine of the west is directed against us,” he said.
Earlier on Monday, Russia’s defence minister appeared on state TV and emergency counter-terrorism measures were cancelled in Moscow and surrounding regions as the Kremlin sought to restore calm following the aborted mutiny by heavily armed mercenary fighters from Prigozhin’s Wagner group.
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The Russian government also appeared to be stopping short of immediately disbanding the mercenary group, which continued recruiting activities in Russia and appeared to have returned to bases.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that the group would continue to operate in Africa, saying that Russian military instructors in countries like the Central African Republic and Mali
The defence ministry released footage that it claimed showed Sergei Shoigu “visiting the forward command post of one of the formations of the ‘Western’ group of troops”. In the video, Shoigu is shown riding in a vehicle and arriving at a command post, where he listens to reports from officers and pores over a battlefield map.
If confirmed, the footage would be the first sighting of Shoigu since Prigozhin declared war on him and his ministry on Friday.
However, the video was released without sound and it was unclear when and where it was filmed. Russian news agencies have in the past released pre-filmed segments called “preserves”, attempting to show that officials including Vladimir Putin were working in the Kremlin when they could be hundreds of miles away.
Nonetheless, the footage showed tacit government support for Shoigu, whom Prigozhin had sought to oust with his uprising.
On Saturday, Prigozhin had claimed Shoigu had fled Rostov before his Wagner fighters took control of the Southern Military District command. In extraordinary footage from the military headquarters, he strong-armed a deputy defence minister into an on-camera debate and called on Shoigu and the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, to meet him in Rostov.
Moscow city, Moscow region, and Voronezh region officials have announced they will end counter-terrorism regimes introduced on Friday, when it appeared Russia was on the brink of civil war.
As Prigozhin’s mercenaries moved on Moscow on Saturday, officials introduced severe restrictions meant to keep the public off the streets and allowing officials extraordinary powers to detain Russians or commandeer private vehicles in case they deemed it necessary.
Law enforcement agencies ordered evacuations of major cultural institutions including the Pushkin Museum and GES-2 cultural centres, Gorky Park and others, cancelled cultural and musical events and introduced a blanket ban on public events.
Troops have also been dismantling barricades and repairing roads blocked with anti-tank traps set up to stop the Wagner convoy, as a sense of uneasy normalcy returned to the Russian capital on Sunday.
Prigozhin has repeatedly blamed Shoigu and Gerasimov for his fighters’ deaths in Ukraine. The Wagner chief has not been seen or heard from since he left Rostov with his troops on Saturday evening with an apparent deal offering him amnesty and exile in Belarus.
The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, citing security sources, reported on Monday that the criminal investigation into Prigozhin for organising an armed mutiny was still being investigated by the FSB security services.
The Kremlin had said that Prigozhin had Putin’s guarantee he could go into exile in Belarus and that the criminal case would be scrapped.
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Wagner says it is continuing to recruit in Russia
A television segment on the Sunday evening show Moscow. Kremlin. Putin also featured the Russian president in his first appearance since he addressed the nation on Saturday morning, where he called the mutiny “internal treason” and said he would “not allow a civil war”. The Sunday night spot appeared to be pre-filmed, with Putin discussing his daily routine and giving no comments on the largest armed uprising in recent Russian history.
The conflict between Prigozhin and Shoigu was at the centre of the weekend’s mutiny.
“I don’t think that this was an attempt to replace Putin,” said Rob Lee, a US-based expert on the Russian military. “I think basically this was a factual dispute between two important Russian figures that became a challenge to Putin, which is the abnormal part of this.”
The Russian ministry of defence had demanded that all paramilitary units, including Wagner, sign contracts that would de facto put them under military control. Details of the agreement between Prigozhin and the Kremlin remain unclear, including the fate of his Wagner mercenaries, which number in the thousands.
Lee said Prigozhin’s capture of a major city and dressing-down of senior military officers, including a deputy minister of defence, had “undermined Russian state control”.
“I don’t know that there’s going to be a direct effect on the battlefield, because Wagner was not playing a role currently on the battlefield. They were replaced in Bakhmut in early June, and I don’t know that they have any guys on the frontlines.”
