Russian President Vladimir Putin grimaces during his joint press conference with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune (not pictured) on the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, June 15, 2023.
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WASHINGTON — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday the organizers of an armed mutiny over the weekend will probably be “dropped at justice” and that his military would have put down the revolt anyway.
The Russian president’s comments were his first since lots of of Wagner Group mercenaries, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, marched on Moscow over the weekend in what seemed to be an armed revolt against Russia’s military leadership.
“That is criminal activity, which is geared toward 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 depart Russia for Belarus. As of Monday afternoon, Prigozhin was believed to be staying in a hotel in Minsk, Belarus, that didn’t have any windows, in keeping with Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The mutiny took the world by surprise and catapulted a taboo query to center stage across Russia: whether Putin’s grip on power may not be as ironclad internally because it looks from the surface.
After they took control of the southern city of Rostov on Saturday, Wagner fighters and lots of of armored vehicles got here inside 200 miles of Moscow before Prigozhin ordered them to show back.
In his speech Monday, Putin thanked those involved within the mutiny “who made the one right decision — they didn’t go to fratricidal bloodshed, they stopped on the last line.”
He then said Wagner Group soldiers could be permitted to hitch the Russian army, to depart the country for neighboring Belarus, as Prigozhin did, or just “to return to your loved ones and friends.”
Putin’s decision to grant unilateral clemency to the Wagner mercenaries seemed out of character to some Russia scholars, coming because it did from an autocratic ruler who often 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 somewhat to protest a planned dissolution of his Wagner Group, his private army.
