Rebellious Russian mercenaries who broke through most of the way to Moscow decided to return to avoid bloodshed, their boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said yesterday.
Fighters of the Wagner private army occupied the city of Rostov the night before last and started a 1.100 km march to Moscow.
Prigozhin said in an audio message that the fighters will return to the bases because of the risk of bloodshed. He said that his men came within 24 kilometers of the capital of Russia in 200 hours.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko mediated the agreement on stopping the further movement of Wagner fighters through Russia in exchange for security guarantees for the rebels, his cabinet announced.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that, according to the agreement, criminal proceedings against Prigozhin for armed rebellion will be dropped, Prigozhin will move to Belarus, and the "Wagner" fighters who joined his march will not be held accountable, in recognition of their previous service Russia.
Peskov, who called yesterday's events "tragic", said that Lukashenko offered to mediate, with Putin's approval, because he has known Prigozhin personally for about 20 years.
Faced with the first serious challenge to his rule, Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to quell an armed rebellion that he compared to the Russian Civil War a century ago.
The Russian army fired at the Wagner convoy from the air, but could not slow down their lightning advance. The convoy of trucks, tanks and infantry fighting vehicles hoped to use the element of surprise and reach Moscow before being intercepted by a larger detachment of Russian regular troops, analysts and Russian military bloggers said.
Russian media showed images of small groups of policemen at machine gun positions on the southern outskirts of Moscow. The authorities of the Lipetsk region south of the capital told citizens to stay at home. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin also urged people to refrain from traveling around the city, as an anti-terrorist operation was declared, and said the situation was "difficult".
Prigozhin previously said his men had embarked on a "march for justice" to remove corrupt and incompetent commanders whom he accuses of mishandling the war in Ukraine. He said that he captured the headquarters of the Russian Southern Military District in the city of Rostov without firing a shot.
In a televised address from the Kremlin, Putin said that the very existence of Russia is at stake.
"We are fighting for the lives and safety of our people, for our sovereignty and independence, for the right to remain Russia, a country with a thousand-year history," he said.
"All those who deliberately set foot on the path of betrayal, who were preparing an armed rebellion, who followed the path of blackmail and terrorist methods, will receive the inevitable punishment, they will answer both before the law and before our people".
Putin later signed a law tightening the rules for violating the state of emergency in places where it has been imposed.
Prigozhin said that the president is making a big mistake when he talks about treason. "We are patriots of our homeland, we fought and are fighting for it," Prigozhin said in an audio message. "We do not want the country to continue living in corruption, fraud and bureaucracy".
Loyalty is key
Western capitals were closely monitoring the situation in nuclear-armed Russia yesterday. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke with colleagues from the G7 countries. He also had a telephone conversation with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
The White House announced that President Joe Biden discussed the situation in Russia with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Richie Sunak. It was reported that they confirmed their unwavering support for Ukraine.
"This represents the most significant challenge to the Russian state in recent times," the British Ministry of Defense said.
"In the coming hours, the loyalty of the Russian security forces, and especially the Russian National Guard, will be key to how this crisis will play out," the statement said.
In yesterday's announcement, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned Western countries not to use the Wagner rebellion "to achieve their Russophobic goals."
Assessing that this is the most serious threat to Putin's rule in 23 years, CNN writes that "it is astonishing to watch the facade of total control that he has maintained all this time crumble overnight."
"Prigozhin, and the forces with him, are not in a position to directly challenge Putin's grip on power, even if they wanted to. But they have already indirectly shown the weakness of that grip," says Chatham House analyst Kir Gilles.
Putin's grip on power could depend on whether he can muster enough loyal troops to fight the mercenaries at a time when most of Russia's military is deployed to the front in southern and eastern Ukraine, Reuters said.
In any conflict between Russian security forces and Wagner's troops, much may depend on what happens at the local level, according to Kir Gilles. He alleges that Wagner has a longstanding close relationship with Russian military intelligence special forces, including joint bases and facilities.
It's hard to know who those forces would side with.
"A decision by units or groups from any of the Russian military, paramilitary or intelligence organizations to stand by Prigozhin or simply refuse to obstruct him could quickly change the balance of power," Gilles commented on yesterday's drama.
Putin's grip on power may depend on whether he can muster enough loyal troops to fight the mercenaries at a time when most of Russia's military is deployed to the front in eastern Ukraine
In a telephone conversation, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan urged Putin to act sensibly.
There were numerous reports yesterday that Putin's presidential plane took off from Moscow's Vnukovo Airport at 14.16:180 p.m. local time and headed northwest. According to data from the tracking website FlightRadar, the plane reached the Tver region, about XNUMX km from Moscow and where Putin has a residence, before disappearing from the system.
There was no confirmation that Putin was on the plane, and his spokesman Peskov told the Tass news agency that the president "works in the Kremlin."
Prigozhin, an ex-convict and longtime Putin ally, leads a private army that includes thousands of ex-convicts recruited from Russian prisons. His men have been involved in some of the fiercest fighting of Ukraine's 16-month war, including the protracted battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut.
Prigozhin has been theatrically criticizing Russian military leaders for months. He accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov of failure and incompetence, as well as denying ammunition to his troops. He ignored orders this month to sign a deal that would have put his forces under the command of the defense ministry.
Wagner's founder launched an apparent rebellion on Friday after he said a military airstrike had killed a large number of his fighters. The Ministry of Defense denied this.
"There are 25.000 of us and we will find the answer to why the chaos is happening in the country," Prigozhin said, vowing to destroy any checkpoints or air forces that stood in Wagner's way. He later said that his men had engaged in clashes with regular soldiers and had shot down a helicopter.
In a series of fevered messages during the night, Prigozhin demanded that Shoigu and Gerasimov come to see him in Rostov.
In one letter, the leader of the mercenaries challenged Shoigu to personally visit the bloody battlefield in Ukraine, where members of Wagner fought and died in Bakhmut. Given the opacity of Putin's system, it was hard to tell whether the conflict between Prigozhin and Shoigu was real. For more than two decades, Putin has played the role of supreme leader, inciting one ambitious faction of the Kremlin against another, using the old tactic of divide and rule.
Prigozhin has previously proven himself as a loyal ally entrusted with special state tasks, including an attempt to sabotage the US presidential election in 2016. According to one version, Prigozhin's public war against Shoigu was approved by the Kremlin leader.
Panic among the generals
Yesterday's dramatic events show that any settlement of this kind with the Kremlin, if it ever existed, is no longer valid, the "Guardian" assesses. Prigozhin requested the dismissal of Shoigu and the entire General Staff.
Panicked Russian generals called on Prigozhin to step down and stop the "coup".
Even if the uprising fails, the aftershocks will be felt for months, fueling political instability and calling into question Putin's ability to lead the country
There was an increased presence of security forces on the streets of Moscow, and Red Square was blocked with metal barriers. Armored vehicles, apparently sent to protect the Ministry of Defense and other bureaucratic centers from a possible internal attack, brought back memories of the failed coup in the summer of 1991, organized by KGB hardliners, to preserve the shaky communist government, "The Guardian" writes. That event accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union a few months later.
The Wagner founder wants Russia to conduct a more vigorous campaign in Ukraine, with better and fairer decision-making at the highest level, and for fewer soldiers to be needlessly sacrificed in ill-conceived attacks.
Prigozhin accuses Shoigu of hiding the extent of Russian losses. He is also unhappy about the retreat last year, when the Russian army was forced to leave the southern city of Kherson and most of the northeastern Kherson region.
"Whatever the outcome of the drama that began on Friday, Putin appears weaker than at any time since he became president. His decision to invade Ukraine turned out to be a major strategic mistake - the biggest of his career and one that could oust him from power , sooner or later," according to the Guardian's analysis.
Even if the uprising fails, the aftershocks will be felt for months, fueling political instability and calling into question Putin's ability to lead the country, the British paper said.
What will change on the front
All of this creates significant and intriguing opportunities for Ukraine. Wagner's base of forces is in the occupied Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Some of them left in the last 24 hours and returned to Russia.
It turned out that Prigozhin's army was a more disciplined and military formation than the regular Russian army. She is now disappearing from the scene and diverting attention from Russia.
There is a risk of confusion among the Russian invasion forces in Ukraine, which in June began a long-awaited strong counter-offensive, using Western weapons and tanks. The goal is to restore the land corridor that connects the occupied territory in eastern Donbas with Crimea and the southern parts of Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.
With Putin forced to watch his back, many believe the turmoil in Russia will give Ukraine an opportunity to step up its counteroffensive and boost the morale of its troops who are fighting bloody and uncertain battles on the battlefield.
Progress has been slow, the Russian military has mined fields, built anti-tank trenches and used its air and artillery superiority to slow Ukraine's advance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has admitted that the counter-offensive is going "slower than he would have liked", and some observers have begun to speculate that the war is headed for a stalemate, with the existing front line of nearly a thousand kilometers the new de facto border.
Prigozhin's latest high-stakes action changes these calculations and the chances of a Ukrainian breakthrough this summer have increased dramatically. If the morale of the Russians at the front falls, and the soldiers are not willing to fight, the territory could be quickly occupied, the "Guardian" assesses.
"The beginning of the civil war in Russia"
Keeping their phones out of their hands, millions of Ukrainians spent a sleepless night on Friday, after boss Wagner declared war on rivals in the Russian military.
"Events are developing according to the scenario we talked about all last year," said Mihail Podoljak, Zelenski's key adviser. "The start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive finally destabilized the Russian elites, intensifying the internal schism that arose after the defeat in Ukraine. Today we are actually witnessing the beginning of a civil war.'
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, announced on Twitter: "As the war began, so it will end - inside Russia."
"That process has started," commented Danilov.
Saying that Russia has long been using propaganda to "mask its weakness and the stupidity of its government", President Zelenskiy said that there was now such chaos "that no lie can hide it".
He added: "Russia's weakness is obvious. Total weakness. And the longer Russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our territory, the more chaos, pain and problems it will have later."
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