An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the world would find itself on the "brink of catostrophe" should Wagner Group "bandits" get their hands on nuclear weapons.
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's Security Council Deputy Chairman issued the warning as Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenaries marched towards Moscow, prior to their dramatic U-turn in order to "avoid bloodshed".
He told Russian News Agency, TASS: "We are well aware of the consequences of a coup d’etat in the largest nuclear power.
"In the history of human race there has never been a situation where the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons was controlled by bandits.
"Such a crisis will obviously not be limited to a single country. The world will be brought to the brink of annihilation."
Medvedev insisted that Russia would not allow Wagner's "crazy criminals" to succeed, however hard it fought.
The Wagner Group had claimed to have seized control of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, and reports suggested it also controlled key sites in Voronezh, before it backed down.
Prigozhin, meanwhile, will now move to Belarus under a deal brokered by its President Alexander Lukashenko to end today's armed mutiny against Russia's military leadership, the Kremlin said.
Along with his fighters, Prigozhin will be safe from prosecution under the agreement, it added.
It comes after Lukashenko told Russian state TV that his country has begun receiving tactical nuclear weapons from its neighbour, adding there would be "no hesitation" in using them.
Some of them he revealed, were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
"We have missiles and bombs that we have received from Russia," Lukashenko said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 Russian state TV channel which was posted on the Belarusian Belta state news agency's Telegram channel.
His comments contradicted earlier statements by Putin, meanwhile, who said Russian nuclear weapons would be deployed to Belarus in July, before emphasising they would remain under Moscow's exclusive control.
