Prigozhin has not been seen in public since Saturday and according to reports, the case against him remains open.

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group that sparked a brief uprising against Russian military command this weekend, has not been seen in public since he called off his mutiny on Saturday. veneer of political stability.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said on Saturday that Mr Prigozhin had agreed to leave Russia for neighboring Belarus as part of an agreement to end hostilities. In return, Mr. Peskov said, the investigation of Mr. Prigozhin and the charges against him for launching the armed uprising would be dropped.

But according to Russian media reports published on Monday, the criminal case against Mr Prigozhin remains open and charges against him have not been dropped. Kommersant, a Russian newspaper, and the country’s three main news agencies – Tass, RIA and Interfax – all reported that the Federal Security Service, or FSB, was continuing its investigation.

The publications, all state-controlled or Kremlin-affiliated, cited anonymous sources so their reports could not be independently verified. If the proceedings go ahead, Mr. Prigozhin could face up to 20 years in prison.

Mr Prigozhin was last seen smiling and shaking hands in public as he left the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Saturday night, having ended his brief uprising against the military leadership and turned back the column of soldiers. he had been sent on a march to Moscow.

Shortly after Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the autocratic leader of Belarus and a trusted ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, released videos of Mr. Prigozhin’s departure from Rostov-on-Don, where Wagner forces briefly captured a military installation on Saturday, appeared, announced that he had brokered the deal to end hostilities. Many observers have expressed doubts about whether Mr Prigozhin would be safe in Belarus given the government’s close ties to Mr Putin.

His whereabouts have since been unknown, and Mr Prigozhin, who has often spoken out rudely on social media channels during the Russian war in Ukraine, has not spoken publicly about leaving for Belarus. On Sunday night, Mr Prigozhin’s press office told RTVI, a Russian TV channel, that he “says hello to everyone and will answer questions” when he has good mobile reception.

On Saturday, during a raid on the five-star Trezzini Hotel in St Petersburg, which is owned by one of Mr Prigozhin’s companies and is believed to be the site of one of his offices, local news outlets reported that police officers stole billions of rubles, packs of a unidentified “white powder” and gold bars.

On Saturday, before ending the mutiny, Mr. Prigozhin acknowledged that he was in possession of large amounts of cash. The money, he said, was used to pay the wages of Wagner troops and to compensate relatives of Wagner fighters killed in Ukraine, amounting to five million rubles per family (about $59,000).

“For 10 years, Wagner operated on a cash-only basis,” he said in an audio recording. “When we worked in Africa, Ukraine and other countries, when we scared America, everyone was happy with cash,” he said, a clear reference to a troll farm that he has admitted to using meddling in US elections. “And now they’re here to search. It’s OK. The money has actually been found.”

Despite the seriousness of Mr Prigozhin’s actions over the weekend, which Mr Putin branded as treason, some Russian officials have been reluctant to criticize Wagner fighters, who have proven effective, if brutal, in fighting on behalf of Russia in Ukraine and other conflicts. .

Andrei Kartapolov, the chairman of the Russian parliament’s defense committee, said on Sunday that the Wagner fighters who took over the army headquarters in Rostov-on-Don “did nothing reprehensible” and simply “followed the orders of their command”.

“They didn’t offend anyone, they didn’t break anything,” he said. “No one has the slightest claim against them – neither the residents of Rostov, nor the military personnel of the Southern Military District, nor the law enforcement agencies.”