On the night of Saturday, Prigozhin said his forces entered the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. Before that, the Russian security service FSB had opened an investigation against the Wagner leader because it was believed that he “incited an armed civil conflict on Russian territory”.
The Wagner leader then said that his forces captured the cities of Voronezh and Lipetsk and also took control of several military installations. The soldiers then continued towards Moscow and according to Prigozhin, they are only 20 kilometers from the capital.
Pictures from the outskirts of Moscow show the Russian military guarding the roads leading into the capital, and anti-terror laws have been announced.
New message from the Wagner leader
But on Saturday night, Prigozhin appeared to change his mind and called on his soldiers to turn around.
“To avoid bloodshed, we withdraw our troops,” he says in an audio clip on Telegram.
Belarus leader Aleksandr Lukashenko says he has been negotiating on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The result is an agreement that it would have been unthinkable to start a bloody massacre on Russian territory,” reads the statement from Lukashenko’s presidential office.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the Wagner group’s rebellion against the Russian military leadership shows a fundamental crack in the Russian wall.
“Russia’s weakness is obvious,” he writes on social media.
Russia experts: Prigozhin will not go free
Yevgeny Prigozhin will have a hard time getting through with his skin intact after the developments of the past 24 hours, believes Katarina Engberg, security policy analyst and Russia expert.
She points out that Putin emphasized Wagner’s efforts in the war in Ukraine in his speech earlier on Saturday.
– He said that the treason itself would be punished, so you can assume that Prigozhin will not go free, but that they will give amnesty to the regular Wagner soldiers, she says and adds that Putin needs them in the war.