Rebel Wagner Forces, impending march on Moscow, retreat abruptly

A domestic security crisis threatening the government of Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin appeared to be abating late Saturday, when a mercenary tycoon whose forces seized critical military and civilian facilities in southern Russia and began an armed march on Moscow abruptly resigned after brokering a Belarus-brokered deal that allowed him and his fighters to escape prosecution.

The leader of the mercenaries, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who had brazenly seized control of the headquarters of the Southern Military District in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and stationed his fighters and tanks in the streets to force a change in the Russian demanding military direction, his private military company said Wagner had come within 200 kilometers (about 124 miles) of Moscow, the capital, without wounding any of its fighters.

But he said the group had reached the point where Russian blood would be spilled “on one side”. And out of a sense of responsibility, he would turn his troops around and send them back to their field camps.

Many questions remained unanswered as the day ended in Moscow, but the outlines of a deal Mr. Prigozhin had negotiated with Belarusian leader Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who served as a mediator, began to sharpen.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov told reporters that under the agreement, Mr. Prigozhin would go to Belarus and the criminal case against him for organizing an armed uprising would be dropped.

Those Wagner fighters who did not take part in the uprising would be given the option to sign contracts from Russia’s Defense Ministry, Peskov said, and the rest would avoid prosecution, given their “heroics at the front”.

“There was a higher purpose: to avoid bloodshed, to avoid an internal confrontation, to avoid clashes with unpredictable consequences,” Peskov said. “It was in the name of these goals that Lukashenko’s mediation efforts were realized and that President Putin made the corresponding decisions.”

As for Mr Prigozhin’s demands to end the “disgrace” of the Russian military leadership, the Kremlin spokesman said such personnel decisions were exclusively the domain of the Russian commander-in-chief and could hardly be the subject of such negotiations.

The announcement by the Kremlin concluded a disastrous day that began with Mr Prigozhin flaunting his brutal capture of the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District and continued with a televised emergency speech by Mr Putin, in which the Russian leader vowed to put down armed mutiny. and mock the Wagnerian warriors as traitors stabbing the motherland in the back.

Russia, Putin warned, was in danger of falling into yet another tragedy similar to the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, when “Russians killed Russians and killed brothers brothers.”

“We will not let this happen again,” he said. “We will protect our people and our state from all threats, including internal treason.”

The Russian leader, who did not name Mr Prigozhin in his taped remarks, said “inflated ambitions and personal interests” had led to betrayal, and he promised the harshest punishment for anyone who had “consciously chosen the path of betrayal”.

He admitted that the situation in Rostov-on-Don, a city of about 1.1 million people, was difficult and said: “In fact, the work of civil and military institutions has been blocked.”

The dramatic moves from Wagner — who for years made Putin’s shadowy geopolitical bids in countries abroad and suffered heavy casualties on the battlefield in Ukraine before turning their sights on Russia itself — represented the biggest backlash Putin had faced since the beginning of his war. last year in Ukraine.

For a moment, the group of fighters appeared to pose one of the greatest threats to the Russian president’s leadership since he came to power more than 23 years ago, showing the risk of armed formations operating outside the government’s control.

The dizzying sequence of events unfolding in less than 24 hours plunged a nation already struggling to fight the war in Ukraine into a full-blown domestic crisis, pitting a Russian president seeking to quell domestic dissent against a former convict. and caterer that mercenary boss, who once helped a beleaguered Russia on the battlefield, but eventually became a political liability for the Kremlin.

In the middle of the day on Saturday, when Mr Prigozhin was seemingly in control of the center of Rostov-on-Don and initially refused to back down, there seemed to be relatively few ways out of the crisis that would not involve clashes within Russia. would bring or would be at risk. a significant loss of life.

Regional officials along the major M-4 highway that connects Rostov-on-Don to Moscow, about 950 kilometers to the north, had said convoys of military equipment were traveling north on the highway and urged local residents to evacuate. to stay.

Videos verified by The New York Times showed signs of active fighting along the highway south of the city of Voronezh, including helicopters and a wrecked roadside truck, after reports that Wagner fighters had entered the Voronezh region, which was halfway between Rostov and Moscow is located. .

“We block the city of Rostov and go to Moscow,” Mr. Prigozhin had said early in the day in the courtyard of the military headquarters.

The Russian Defense Ministry, which addressed the Wagner fighters directly in a statement, told them that they had been tricked into Mr Prigozhin’s “criminal adventure” and that their safety would be guaranteed if they contacted the authorities .

Perhaps the most shocking scene of the day came when footage emerged of Mr Prigozhin in charge of the Southern Military District Headquarters, where he appeared to have two top Russian officials surrounded by Wagner guards.

In the video, Mr. Prigozhin demanded a meeting with Russia’s top military officer, General Valery V. Gerasimov, and the country’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, to end what he described as a “shame”.

“We came here,” says Mr. Prigozhin. “We want the Chief of General Staff and Shoigu. As long as they are not here, we will stay here.”

Throughout the video, Mr. Prigozhin casually sat between the two uneasy Russian officials — a deputy defense minister, Colonel General Yunus-bek Yevkurov, and a deputy chief of military intelligence, Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev — as he criticized the policy of the Russian army. bad leadership in Ukraine.

General Yevkurov asked Mr. Prigozhin to let the regular soldiers of the Military District Headquarters leave. “Absolutely not,” replied Mr. Prigozhin, before berating the general for killing fighters by “throwing them into a meat grinder” in Ukraine “without any ammunition, any thought or any plans.”

Mr Prigozhin denounced the general for showing disrespect by referring to him using the informal “you” in Russian, saying that if the Russian military could have spoken to his group in a normal tone, he would not have should have come

General Yevkurov later asked whether Mr. Prigozhin considered the actions he took justified. “They’re absolutely right,” Mr. Prigozhin said. “We are saving Russia.”

By the end of the day, Wagner fighters had maneuvered a tank from where they had parked it between the gates of the Rostov-on-Don circus, and Mr. Prigozhin was photographed waving goodbye from a vehicle window.

The situation created by Mr. Prigozhin initially seemed like a dramatic denouement for a man who spent years in prison during the Soviet era, but became wealthy after showing up to Mr. Putin in St. Petersburg in the 1990s and receiving government catering contracts. brought in.

He came into the limelight last year when Wagner took a bigger role in prosecuting Moscow’s laborious war effort in Ukraine, eventually seizing control of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut amid staggering losses.

The situation sparked a fierce rivalry between Mr Prigozhin and top Russian military leaders that erupted when he released expletive-laden public videos attacking them for incompetence.

The power struggle between Prigozhin’s force and the Russian army for months seemed untenable, with the expectation that Putin would eventually take action to curb the division. But then nothing happened.

In audio recordings released late Friday night, Mr Prigozhin suggested that Moscow had finally sided with the Russian military and accused the Defense Ministry of launching an attack on a Wagner camp in Ukraine, an accusation the Russian authorities publicly refuted.

A Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel on Saturday accused Putin of causing the civil unrest himself by refusing to “retire one or two degenerates” and siding with them over “the most combat-ready unit in Russia.”

After Mr. Prigozhin pulled out, the Telegram channel called APWagner burst into a rage: “I’m tearing up my contract.”

Exactly how Mr. Prigozhin had intended to outwit the Russian security services was not clear.

By late Saturday, no units within the Russian military or police appeared to have defected to Wagner, and no prominent Russian officials had expressed open support for the group of mercenaries. Top officials across Russia have released comments supporting Mr Putin, making the Wagner boss seem isolated.

Popular pro-war Russian blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk, writing on Telegram under the name Rybar, said that while he did not approve of Mr. Prigozhin’s actions, the mercenary boss “gave a voice to all those problems and weak links that became unacceptable. discuss aloud.”

Mr. Zvinchuk noted that Mr. Putin not only ignored Mr. Prigozhin in his remarks, but also did not mention the defense minister or the chief of general staff, “which is saying a lot”.

Since there seemed to be some sort of agreement with Mr Prigozhin, the question remained whether there would be any repercussions for Russia’s defense minister and top military officer, the blogger added.

Despite one of the biggest threats to Russian national security in years, neither of them had spoken all day.

Reporting contributed by Anton Trojanovsky, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Valerie Hopkins And Neil MacFarquhar.